


Sydney: Season One

by CRebel



Series: Sydney Rose Dixon [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Coming of Age, Daryl's Daughter, Dysfunctional Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Friendship/Love, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 02:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 38,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3632934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CRebel/pseuds/CRebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten-year-old Sydney Dixon doesn't really fit in with the other kids at the survivors' camp, but that's alright. She gets by just fine . . . until the day some of her fellow survivors come back from a supply run without her uncle. Everything goes downhill from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Walker in the Woods

I don't like waking up in the RV. I prefer a tent, being outside. But when my dad's gone, the RV it is, usually with me lying on the floor, or, if I wasn't really tired the night before, curled up in one of the front seats where I can see everything. Last night was a seat night, so I wake up now with my knee in my face and my arm asleep. It's barely dawn. I'm an early riser, always have been. My dad says that's good. He says I'm gonna be a kickass hunter someday. Someday.

I'm tangled in a scratchy blanket that someone, probably Dale or Glenn, must have put over me last night. I separate myself from it and leave it behind.

My bag's in one of the seats at the table. I have to step over Glenn, sleeping on the floor like I've done a lot of times, to get to the thing, but I do and I take it to the bathroom. I glance into the back room on my way. Bed's empty. Dale's likely already on top of the RV, if he ever even left.

I slept in one of my dad's old shirts last night, like I did a lot before the walkers came. Mom used to hate it, having to wash her ex's shirts all the time. But it was how I kept my dad close. Right now he's on a hunt, and I missed him a lot last night, more than usual, because of what happened with Merle. So that's why it's his old shirt I change out of now, rolling it up loosely and exchanging it for a plain gray T-shirt closer to my size.

On the day she died, Mom nearly keeled over sooner than she had to because she couldn't let herself pack all of the clothes she'd loved to buy for me, the colorful stuff with the frills, and the dresses, and the pretty shoes. But she knew it was time to be practical. So now I wear this T-shirt. This plain gray T-shirt.

I trade basketball shorts for jeans, pull on socks that don't match, and leave the bathroom. I put my bag back at the table, move around Glenn again to get to the door. My shoes are there. I have boots I wear when Dad takes me hunting, but those are in my bag. Haven't worn those in a long time. Not since we joined with this camp. So I put on my tennis shoes and take up the sheathed knife that sat beside them. I hook it onto my jeans and go.

 

It's warm outside, but the fresh air is nice on my skin. Humid, though. The sun's barely up, but I can tell it's gonna be cloudy today, at least for a while. Might rain. No, no it won't, doesn't smell like it. Dad taught me that you can always tell if it's gonna rain by smelling the air.

Not a lot of people are up yet. Jim's pacing around the cool car Glenn brought back from the supply run yesterday, examining it closely. Carol and Lori are on the far side of the fire twenty feet from the RV's door. A few others pace around, nobody I've really talked to. I haven't gotten to know many people here. Dad and Merle and I mainly keep to ourselves. When they're both gone, I keep to myself, except maybe for Carl and sometimes the other kids. But this morning I want to be alone.

Carol and Lori haven't seen me. They have a few baskets of laundry in front of them and seem to be debating something about a particular pair of pants. Dale's on top of the RV, I'm sure, but he won't try to stop me from leaving the main campsite. I don't think my dad's ever said anything to him, but Dale gets that I'm not like the other kids. I actually know what I'm doing out here.

I cut over to my left, past Jim and the car, across the road leading down the mountain, through the fence of vehicles – I run my hand over my dad's truck as I pass – and out into the woods. I glance back once and see Dale watching me. Even from a distance, I can tell he's worrying, but like I thought, he doesn't try to stop me. Camp's safe, anyway.

I get deep enough into the woods that I can't hear the sounds of the main part of camp, not clearly, anyway. It's all muffled. I reach one of the strings with the cans on it, tied around trees and hanging a couple of feet off the ground, signaling camp's border. I don't go past this string. Dad told me I can't, not without him or Merle or some other grownup. Not that I ever go anywhere with any other grownup.

I pace along the string, though, watching the thick woods beyond, still shadowy in the early morning light, and I squint, scanning for movement, keeping my footsteps as soft as I can. I'm pretty good at that, but not as good as Dad or Merle, even though I'm way lighter. Dad says it takes a lot of practice.

I don't see him. I knew I wouldn't. This was the area he left from a few days ago, but of course that doesn't mean he'll come back this way. And it's really early. If he's back today, it'll be later.

I'm just nervous. Not about my dad being okay, nothing can take him on – not even walkers – but about how he'll be when he gets back and finds out about Merle. About how Carl's dad left him on a roof in the city to die.

Shane says he'll tell Dad. That's not right, though. I'm blood, I should be the one to tell him. But I wasn't about to argue with Shane, it wouldn't do much good. I'll just have to try to beat him to it.

Movement off in the woods. My eyes go to it. Nothing. I bend down and pull a rock up from the damp soil, and I rear back and heave it where I thought I saw something. It looks like it falls a little short – still pretty far for a ten-year-old girl, though, because I'm really strong – but it serves its purpose. As soon as the stone lands with a soft thud and a harsh whisper of leaves, something darts from behind a tree. A squirrel. The thing bolts back and I almost lose sight of it, but then it runs forward again, then jumps back, forward. Merle says all squirrels are spazzes.

Used to say.

I narrow my eyes at the animal as it darts up a tree, and then I pretend to raise a crossbow and I aim in on it. I catch it in my sights when it pauses on a low branch. I make a soft clicking noise and mentally count the squirrel as my own.

Dad should have taken me hunting. I know he likes to do it alone sometimes, but I've got nothing to do around here. And I'm good at hunting. Dad says I'm a better shot than any other kid he's ever seen, except maybe himself, and he was just kidding when he said that. I should be out there with him. Not here, worrying about telling him my uncle's likely dead, torn apart by walkers, not even getting a fighting chance because of that dumb cop. Carl's dad. The man who should have stayed dead.

I don't mean that.

"Sydney!"

I look over my shoulder and pretend it's Mom's voice. But really, it's Lori's. Dale must've caved and told her I went off. Or maybe she checked the RV. I sigh and glance back at the squirrel, but it's gone now. Oh, well. I already killed it.

I trudge back to camp.

. . . . .

I like Carl. I wish I didn't, because his dad left my uncle for dead and it's not right that I should like him after that, but I can't stop now. He's been nice since I got here. And his mother looks out for me. I can't just start to hate them both.

These are my thoughts as Carl passes me an open can of beans. I mumble thanks. He smiles.

It's been an hour since I woke up. Carl and I are alone by the fire, eating breakfast. I didn't want to sit down, not with Carl already being there, but I wasn't about to run off and hide, either. So here I am. And now he's giving me food.

Carl's already scraped what he wants into a bowl, so I just dig into the can with the spoon I've been twirling in my fingers, and because I want to get it out of the way, I say, "So it's good about your dad."

I don't look at him, I look at the food, but I can still see his feet, and they twitch around. "Yeah," he says, and I can hear the effort to control his excitement but it doesn't work. "It is. I never thought –" He stops. I still don't look up. Then he says, "Sorry about your uncle."

I nod. Alright. Now it's out of the way and we can pretend like nothing's changed, at least for a while, at least until Dad gets back. I chew another bite and swallow.

Carl gets that the matter doesn't need to be brought up again. He says, "After the other kids get up, wanna play tag?"

I consider this. "Freeze tag or normal?"

"I don't know. I like normal better."

"Yeah, me too. I'll play if it's normal tag."

"Okay."

There. Carl and I can still be friends. I can hate his dad with everything I got, no problem. But Carl and I can still be friends.

Carl and I don't talk much more. We finish our breakfasts and then watch as Jim, Dale, and some others begin to strip down the car Glenn brought back, which makes me a little sad and a little mad. I really hoped to ride in the thing. Carl keeps glancing over toward his tent, waiting, I'm sure, for his ever-loving father to come out and strut around the camp, playing the hero everyone keeps acting like he is. Nobody cares about Merle around here, except my dad and me.

Sophia and Louis and Eliza arrive within minutes of each other. Eliza is carrying that doll with her. She's too old for a doll. I keep my mouth shut, though, because she's nice enough, for all she's soft.

As soon as the Morales children appear and Carl's pitched his idea for tag, we all dart away to ask our parents. Or they do, anyway. Louis and Eliza retreat to their tent, Sophia heads to Carol at the ironing board, and Carl goes to where his mom's hanging laundry on a line. I follow him, because I guess Lori's in charge of me more than Carol. Whatever, I'd go even if she said no, if I wanted to. She's not the boss of me. But if Carl can't go, not much point, I guess.

"Mom?" Carl asks, coming up to her side as she shakes out a shirt. "Can I go play tag with the other kids?"

Lori looks up at him. "Where?"

"Out in the woods. We won't go far."

She looks a little like my mom when she does that, makes that concerned face. Maybe it's just a mom thing. But no, she actually does look a little like Mom, with the dark hair and all. I touch my own dark hair as Lori says, "Carl, you know I don't like you goin' where I can't see you."

Carl looks over at me. "But I'll be with Sydney. And Sophia and the others. We'll be careful. Please?"

Lori sighs, hanging the shirt up. She thinks for a minute. "Okay, go ahead. But stay within earshot."

Carl grins at me and we go.  
. . . . .

I haven't seen a rabbit around here up till now. I mean, we haven't been here for very long, but Dad hasn't even brought one back from a hunt, so I was wondering. But here one is, right in front of me.

My knife's in my hand.

Sophia spotted the thing. About twenty feet away from where our little group was at the time, panting and tired from a game of tag, deciding whether or not to play again. She thought it was cute, Sophia. And it is, I guess. But I can't think about that.

I creep closer to the animal, adjusting my grip on the knife, trying for the second time this morning to keep my steps quiet. The rabbit is crouching in the brush. I think maybe it's hurt, I can't believe it hasn't run off yet, unless it's just really unusually dumb.

"Sydney, don't," I hear Sophia plead from behind me. I halt, but not because of her. I'm close enough.

My dad gave me this knife. It's made for throwing. He's been teaching me how to use it, and I'm good, but I've never actually killed anything with it. First time for everything, though.

I square my feet and balance the knife in my hand. I throw.

It lands somewhere behind the rabbit, disappearing into the brush, and the rabbit's gone like a flash. Guess it wasn't injured after all. "Damn it."

Carl comes up behind me. "Looked like you got pretty close," he says, but he can't tell, I can't even tell. I can't see my knife from here, it's hidden under a hoard of green. I walk over.

"If I had a gun, I'da killed it, easy," I mutter.

"I'm glad you didn't get it," Sophia says in her high-pitched voice. She's two years older than me, but she doesn't act like it. "It wasn't hurting anyone."

"Yeah, neither was that squirrel you ate for supper last night." I crouch down and push my hands through the thick green. It's not one individual bush, just a bunch of weeds and vines tangled together, which makes things a bit harder. A thorn scratches my hand, but I see my knife, and yeah, it did hit pretty close to the rabbit, I think. I reach out and that's when I hear it.

Moaning. And chewing.

Carl's behind me. I think he probably sees it as soon as I hear it. All I know is that my hand is on the knife's hilt just as he's saying, "Walker!"

Sophia or Eliza screams as I stand up. My hand drags back along some thorns, but I don't think about it, because in the small clearing just beyond this brush – the clearing I've somehow managed to miss – is the walker. It's got a deer corpse in front of it and looks like it's having a fine breakfast.

My first instinct is to run, but then I feel like a chicken and so I think about using the knife in my hand to go up and stab the thing in the head, because that's where you gotta hit them, you gotta go for the brain, and I've never done it myself but I've seen my dad and uncle do it enough times. But then I remember my dad telling me that if I ever come across a walker alone, the first thing I gotta try to do is run like hell. Only stab the thing if I can't run. But I can run. So I do. Me and all the other kids, we turn tail and head back to camp.

"Mom!" Carl screams. "Dad!"

Sophia cries for Mommy. Isn't she too old for that? Am I the only girl around here who acts her age? Jesus. But I guess if there's any time to cry for mommy, it's when you've seen a walker. I hate walkers. And they are scary, I can't say different.

We run into the grownups before we reach camp. They're charging over, most of men all carrying some sort of weapon or another, they all run by too fast for me to study each one, all I know I see Carl's dad – Rick – and Shane and Dale and maybe Jim. I don't catch any of the other faces, but there are more, and then Carl's suddenly stopped, and so I stop, too. His mom's there, bending down and holding him tightly. I exhale and run my arm over my face.

"Nothing bit you?" Lori asks breathlessly as people pass. "Nothing scratched you?"

Carl confirms that no, nothing touched him. Lori looks at me and I shake my head. She lets out a long breath and stands, one hand on her son and one reaching over to me. "Come on," she says, "They'll handle it, let's get you two back."

And so we go. I hear chopping noises from behind us, though, and then there's one less walker in Georgia.

Lori takes us into the RV. Carol is there with Sophia. Carl asks, and Carol says that Eliza and Louis are fine, they're at their tent with their parents. I accept some water from Lori and drink it while leaning out the RV door, waiting for the men to come back.

But it's not Shane or Dale or the hero-sheriff Rick who comes back first. Within a minute or two, emerging from the forest with his crossbow and a bundle of squirrels, is my dad.

Of course. The deer.

I smile and jump out of the RV. Lori calls after me but I run over to the edge of the camp anyway. I'm about five feet from Dad when I remember with a sinking feeling that Merle's gone.


	2. Anger

"Hey, Little Bit," Dad says when he sees me. His face is extra dirty, like it always is after a hunt. "You behave?"

"Yeah –"

"Good girl. Come help your uncle 'n me take care of these squirrels. Where's he at?"

He walks past, and I'm lost for a moment. "Dad –"

"Merle!" he calls out to the camp, walking to the fire. "Merle! Get your ugly ass out here! Got us some squirrel!" He sets down his crossbow. "Let's stew 'em up . . ."

I've followed him. I speak louder now. "Dad, Uncle Merle's not here."

He stops and squints. "Whaddya mean? Where'd he go?"

I shift. "They . . . they came back from a supply run without him. Yesterday."

Dad stares down at me, and for a minute, I feel like I've done something really, really bad.

Then Shane's voice comes from behind me, and I find that I have never liked the man so much. "Daryl, I need to talk to you" is what he says, and I turn to see him just arriving, the other men – Rick and Dale and Jim and Morales and Glenn – all with him, coming out of the woods with bloody shovels and pickaxes and the like.

"What's this my kid tells me 'bout my brother?" Dad asks as Shane approaches, and his voice is harder than it was before. Can't blame him. Oh, this is going to be bad. It was stupid of me not to want Shane to do this. I'm just a kid.

Shane walks around Dad and me. He gestures at the RV. "Sydney, why don't you go inside for a minute?"

I don't know why. It's not like you can't hear everything from inside that thing. But I look at my dad, and he gives me a quick jerk of nod, so I do what Shane says. It's cooler in the RV, anyway, and I'm sweating a lot, because the day turned out to be sunnier than I thought it'd be, which feels wrong.

Inside, Carl is the first face I see. I shrug but don't know what I mean by it. Lori steps outside, and I stay behind her, facing the doorway, so I'm in the RV but can still see everything. My stomach has butterflies.

"Daryl," Shane's saying, "There was a, uh – a problem in Atlanta."

I can't see Shane from here, but I can see my dad. He looks at the ground as he asks, "He dead?"

"We're not sure."

My dad moves closer to Shane. He still has the squirrels in his hand. "He either is or he ain't!"

"No easy way to say this," says someone who isn't Shane, "So I'll just say it."

Rick comes into view. I almost look at Carl but don't.

"Who're you?" my dad snarls.

"Rick Grimes."

"Rick Grimes?" Dad repeats, his voice already accusing. Mad. "You got somethin' you wanna tell me?"

I press my teeth into my knuckle.

"Your brother was a danger to us all," Rick says. "So I handcuffed him on a roof, hooked him to a piece of metal. He's still there."

For the hundredth time since yesterday, I picture walkers attacking my uncle. My helpless uncle, unable to do anything but cuss at the geeks. I can't imagine Merle being helpless, though, that part's hard to see.

Dad walks away from Rick, out of my line of view. "Hold on," I hear him say. "Let me process this – you're sayin' you handcuffed my brother to a roof, and you _left him there?!"_

I hate it when Dad yells.

"Yeah," Rick says.

There's a pause. Then Rick ducks, something flies over his head – the squirrels – and then my dad rushes at Rick, but Shane rams Dad from the side and knocks him out of sight. I move up. Lori is at the door, and if she hears me or senses me or what, I don't know, but she turns and presses a hand on my shoulder, giving me an eyebrows-raised _NO_ look. I step back, mostly because she looks like my mom again. All three of the men are out of view now. I listen.

"Watch the knife!" someone else warns. T-Dog? My dad's pulled his knife, then. I hear him grunt. He'll be trying to kill Carl's dad. There's a punch. I risk stepping closer to Lori, pressing my face against the doorframe so I can see. I do this just in time to watch Shane put my dad in a chokehold and drag him away from Rick, who bends down to pick up something – the knife.

"You'd best let me go!" my dad shouts from the ground, thrashing.

"Nah, I think it's better if I don't," Shane says calmly.

I realize that I'm gripping the knife at my waist. I drop my hand but then put it back.

"Choke holdin's illegal!"

"Yeah, you can file a complaint . . . Come on now, we'll keep this up all day. . ."

I wanna go out there. I _should_ go out there. Dad won't try to kill anyone in front of me, I don't think so, anyway . . . Well, maybe. He hasn't been _this_ mad in a while. I can't remember the last time, actually. Maybe never.

Rick kneels down. He says something to my dad in a low voice, so low I can't hear, but a second later Shane's let Dad go, and Dad's still on the ground, pointing at Shane the way he does at me if I don't mind right away.

"What I did was not on a whim," Rick says, still crouched. "Your brother does not work and play well with others."

With these people, maybe not. He always did fine with my dad and me.

"It's not Rick's fault," someone says, and I know it's T-Dog this time. "I had the key. I dropped it."

"You couldn't _pick it up?_ " Dad hisses.

"Well, I dropped it in a drain."

My dad's on his knees. He leans forward for a second, breathing heavily. Is he crying? I can't remember seeing him cry, ever. I don't think he is.

He stands after a second and walks past the RV door, and I switch sides to keep him in sight. "If that's supposed to make me feel better, it _don't."_

"Well, maybe this will," T-Dog says. "Look, I chained the door to the roof, so the geeks couldn't get at him. With a padlock."

I squeeze the doorframe. My chest feels funny. Nobody told me this. Does this mean Merle's definitely alive?

"That's gotta count for somethin'," Rick says.

A pause. Then, "Hell with alla ya'll!" Dad steps away, out of sight, then back. "Just tell me where he is," he says to Rick shakily. "So's I can go get him."

No, no, no, no. He can't go into the city alone.

Then Lori's speaking, out of the blue. "He'll _show_ you," she says, and I look at the back of her head. She doesn't sound normal. "Isn't that right?"

That last part, I think, was to Rick. Rick doesn't reply right away. "I'm goin' back," he says finally, and now I look at Carl, because our dads just gave us something in common.

. . . . .

Rick showed up yesterday in a huge truck – a cube van, Jim called it – and that's what he and Dad and Glenn and T-Dog are about to leave in. They're all going back for Merle, Merle and a bag of guns Rick dropped on the way in. Mostly the guns, I think.

I follow Dad over to the truck thirty minutes after what happened at the RV, the first time I've caught him alone. He heads to the edge of the cargo area and puts his crossbow in. The cube looks huge, as big as my room at Mom's house was. I'd like to ride in it.

"You be good," Dad tells me. "And if they try to cook up them squirrels, you make sure it's done right."

I inhale, and before I can change my mind I blurt, "I don't think you should go."

His tone is sharp. The look he's giving me hurts. "What, you'd rather I leave your uncle out there to die?"

I swallow. "I don't want _you_ to die." My voice doesn't tremble, even though I really do kind of want to cry. I love my uncle, I do, but I love my dad a whole lot more.

"I ain't gonna," Dad says, and then he leans down, so we're talking face-to-face. "Merle's blood," he reminds me. "Mine and yours. If it were me or you up on that roof, Merle'd come get us. So I gotta go get him."

Fine. I lift my chin. "Then I wanna go with you."

He snorts and straightens. "No."

"Why not?"

"'Cause there's a reason I call ya 'Little Bit,' that's why." Dad walks past me, looking over at the RV. Rick and T-Dog are talking to Dale and Jim over there.

"I ain't that little."

_Don't say "ain't," Sydney,_ I can hear Mom say.

I clench my fists and talk to my dad's back. "And I can shoot. I woulda shot any of them walkers you and Uncle Merle killed before we got here, if you'da let me."

"Well, I didn't. And I ain't about to start now."

"Dad –"

_"Hey!"_ he snaps, turning around, and I shut my mouth. He shakes his head. "This ain't no discussion. Matter's closed."

And so I don't argue anymore. But I hate all of this.

Dad nods behind me, where I know Lori and Carl are sitting on a car. "Now you go on. I'll be back before you know I'm gone, and I'll have Merle with me, too."

I give him one more begging look.

"Go on."

And so I nod and walk away, towards Lori and Carl, I think, but I keep my head down because I don't want anyone to notice how close I am to crying.


	3. Digging

Morning becomes afternoon, and it gets hard to keep myself busy once Carl goes off to catch frogs with Shane.

I look over Dale's book collection, not for the first time, but find nothing good. My Nana and Papaw bought me the full  _Harry Potter_  series for my birthday, and I was about to start the fourth book when the walkers came. I guess I'll probably never finish those now.

After browsing I go and practice throwing my knife at a tree, but Carol tells me to stop before I hurt myself. That makes me mad, because I know what I'm doing, but I listen anyway to avoid getting in trouble and putting more on Dad's plate when he gets back, which I know he will.

I go for a walk in the woods and find the spot where we saw the walker this morning. The corpse isn't there anymore, and neither is the deer. Someone must have dragged them off to burn.

Time keeps passing. But too slow.

I guess I've sunk a little low by the time I decide to go and sit with Dale on top of the RV. I climb up to sit in his chair and I watch while he paces around, gun in hand. I'm still bored, but this is better than nothing.

I look out at the quarry, huge and sparkling, and even though I narrow my eyes in search of walkers I somehow end up focusing on a speck floating out in the middle of the water. A boat. "Who's that?" I ask Dale.

"Oh, that's Andrea and Amy. They went out fishing."

I nod to myself.

After a second, Dale says, "I bet you've been out fishing a few times yourself, huh?"

I nod more. "Yeah. With my dad. But we haven't in a while, 'cause I don't like it much."

"Oh? Why's that?"

I wiggle my index finger back and forth until it cracks in the middle. Mom hated that. I do it to my middle finger next. "Just don't," I reply, but that's not the full story, and I like Dale alright, so I admit, "I didn't like putting the worms on the hook."

"Pretty gross, huh?"

"That's not it," I say, and it's not. "I just don't like puttin' the hook through 'em. My dad says they don't feel it, but I still don't like it."

"Well, I can't blame you there."

Merle did. He laughed and told me I was acting like a little girly-girl when he found out I didn't like baiting my own hook. But I don't tell Dale that, because I know he already doesn't think much of Merle. Instead I say, "And sometimes, if you don't start reelin' in soon enough, the fish'll swallow the hook, and a lot of the time they die."

"And you like throwin' them back?"

"No," I say. Well, yes, sometimes Dad would let me throw one back if it was too small or something, and I always felt a secret happiness for the fish. But usually we kept what we caught. Too good of food to waste. "It's just that they're supposed to die fast. Like, when Dad cleans 'em, the first thing he'll do is cut their throat, so they're dead right off." I glance at Dale to see if this topic bothers him. Some people don't like to talk about things like this. But Dale glances back at me, old face calm and interested, and so I continue, "But when they swallow the hook, they don't die fast. It ain't like huntin', with an arrow or a bullet, 'cause that's pretty quick, if you hit right. Swallowin' the hook, I think it hurts worse."

Dale nods. "Uh-huh," he says, and he actually sounds like he's listening. Sometimes grownups don't listen and that's rough. But Dale's good.

"Yeah." I say. "And so Dad never took me fishin' much, not after he knew I didn't like it. We mostly hunted on his weekends."

"Seems like a good arrangement," Dale says. "And it sounds like you've given this quite a lot of thought."

I shrug again. I guess I have. But it was never a big deal.

Dale brings his binoculars up. "What are you doing?" he murmurs, and I don't think he's talking to me now, but I'm not sure.

"What?"

He lowers the binoculars. Even from over here, I can see that his bushy eyebrows are close together. He looks worried, just like this morning when I went away from camp. I follow where he's looking and see a figure on top of the hill a ways off, half-hidden by shrubs and the tips of trees. It's moving, but I can't tell what it's doing. "Who's that?"

"It's Jim," Dale answers, still watching the figure. He seems confused. Puzzled, I remember that word from somewhere. Yes, Dale looks puzzled. After a moment he turns to me and says, "Sydney, do you mind holding down the fort for a few minutes? I think you're more than capable."

I nod that I am, and he hands me the binoculars. The first thing I do is hold them up and look at Jim. He's digging, got a shovel and everything. Why? Burying the walker from this morning? No, they definitely would have burned it. It's too hot to be digging the way Jim is. I guess Dale's gonna take care of it, though, so I focus on keeping watch, like I said I would. I got my dad's blue eyes, and Dad says that means I got his hunter's eyes, and so I spend a while carefully scanning everything around the camp, daring a walker to try and get past me and my hunter's eyes.

I check back over at Jim every now and then, though. I see when Dale reaches him and talks to him. Jim never stops digging, even with Dale there.

I see when Andrea and Amy come back from fishing, too, and they have a huge load of fish, and I gotta admit it's impressive, and wow, fish sounds good.

But then, just as Andrea and Amy are showing off their catch at the campfire, Dale appears. How did I miss him coming back? I chew myself out and turn to survey the area. When I'm satisfied I've seen it all now – no walkers – I look back to the group. Shane's arrived. Dale is pointing at something. I don't have to look to know it's Jim, and with a heavy, twisting feeling I realize that whatever he's doing, why he's digging, it isn't good.

. . . . .

A few minutes go by before a man comes up to take over watch. I think his name is Ricky. I scowl, because I've been doing a good job, but I hand over the binoculars anyway. A big group, headed by Shane and Dale, just started up the hill, and I figure they gotta be going to talk to Jim, and I don't want to miss that.

I chase after the group and fall into place behind Carl. It's him and Lori and Carol and Sophia and Dale and Morales and there's Shane at the head. There are others, but I don't know them. The road up the hill isn't bad, just a little grown over. The group walks, mostly in silence, until we reach the top. There, the ground flattens out into a small field, covered in green grass and weeds that come up nearly to my waist in some places. A few holes are scattered around, pretty shallow, with Jim in the middle of them all and working on a new one, and the smell of dirt clings to the moist air and breathing isn't comfortable. Shane comes to a stop in front of Jim, who doesn't look up or quit digging, and the rest of us stop, too. It's quiet for a second, except for the sounds of the shovel stabbing at the earth.

"Hey, Jim?" Shane says after a minute.

Jim doesn't answer. He's really sweaty, his shirt's close to soaked. I rub my hand through my hair and feel the heat, the dampness on my scalp. My face feels like it might be getting burnt and my clothes are sticking to me. How is Jim doing this without dropping?

Shane says, "Jim, why don't you hold up, alright? Just give me a second here? Please?"

Jim lets out a long sigh and straightens, driving his shovel straight down, hard. He looks at Shane and no one else. "What do you want?"

"We're all just a little concerned, man, that's all."

"Dale says you've been out here for hours," Morales adds.

Dale didn't tell me that.

Jim looks mad. "So?"

"So why're you diggin'?" asks Shane.

Jim rubs his hand over his mouth.

"What, you headin' to China, Jim?" Shane's joking, but he's not being mean about it. I like Shane, mostly.

"What does it matter?" Jim asks. He grins, and grins are supposed to be happy, but Jim's not happy, I can tell. He takes the shovel into both hands again. "I'm not hurtin' anyone."

"Yeah, except maybe yourself," Dale says. He waves an arm. "It's a hundred degrees today. You can't keep this up."

"Sure I can – watch me."

"Jim," says Lori. I look at her, surprised, as she steps forward, up beside Dale and Shane. "They're not gonna say it, so I will . . . You're scarin' people."

Jim pauses again, straightens again, looks irritated again. Like we're all just in his way.

"You're scarin' my son," Lori continues. "And Carol's daughter."

I side-look at Carl. I would be embarrassed, but he doesn't seem to be. Neither does Sophia. They're both under Carol's arms. I'm off to the side, and I clench my teeth. I'm glad Lori didn't say anything about me. I'm not scared. I don't scare easy, that's what Dad says.

Jim's voice is tired. "They got nothin' to be scared of." He looks at all of us. "I mean, what the hell, people? I'm out here by myself – why don't you all just go and leave me the hell alone?"

Maybe we should. I guess he  _isn't_  hurting anyone. But it's not my place to say, I think it's Shane's, and it's clear that Shane's not going to let Jim do this. He steps forward as the other man starts into the dirt again. "We think that you need to take a break, okay?" he tells Jim. "Why don't you go and get yourself in the shade? Some food maybe? I'll tell you what – maybe in a little bit, I'll come out here, and help you myself, Jim, just tell me what it's about. Why don't you just go ahead and give me that shovel?"

Jim stops digging for the third time. "Or what?"

_Or what._ It's a challenge. A dare. I've said that to Mom before, a few times, but never to my dad, because he would never let me get away with it, and Mom would . . . Jim must think Shane will let him get away with it, then.

The worst Mom would ever do is yell. Shane doesn't even do that. His voice is calm. "There is no 'or what,'" he says to Jim. "I'm  _asking_ you. I'm comin' to you and I am askin' you, please. I don't want to have to take it from you."

Take it? The shovel?

Jim shakes his head. "And if I don't, then what? Then you're gonna beat my face in like Ed Peletier, aren't you?"

Sophia's mom pulls her closer. Ed is Sophia's father, and he limped up from the quarry earlier today with his face beaten up worse than anybody I've ever seen. I don't like Ed – Dad told me to steer clear of him – but I almost had to feel bad about it, he looked so roughed up. But Amy was there when it happened, and she wouldn't tell me much, but she said that Shane did it and Ed had it coming.

"Y'all seen his face, huh?" Jim calls to the group now. "What's  _left_ of it?" He leans in close to Shane. "Now, see, that's what happens when someone crosses you."

"That was different, Jim," Shane says, and I can't see his face, just the back of his head, but that tone makes something twinge inside of me. Not fear, no, because I don't scare easy, but I'm nervous. Just a little.

Amy speaks up. "You weren't there. Ed was out of control. He was hurting his wife."

"That is  _their_  marriage!" Jim screams. I jump, Jim gestures at Shane. "That is not  _his_!"

I don't think that's fair, though. Husbands aren't supposed to hurt their wives, boys aren't even supposed to hit girls, and if Ed was doing something wrong and wouldn't stop, Shane was right to make him.

"He is not judge and jury!" Jim's still pointing at Shane. "Who voted you king boss, huh?"

Shane stays calm. I wonder when he'll put Jim into a chokehold, though, because surely that's coming. "Jim, I'm not here to argue with you, alright? Just give me the shovel, okay?" Shane steps closer to him, hand stretched out.

"No, no, no. . ." Jim holds the shovel away.

"Please, just give me the –  _Jim!_ "

Shane gets too close and Jim shoves him back, hard. Then he takes a swing with the shovel. Shane dodges and jumps forward, tackling Jim to the ground, and I wait for a chokehold, but it doesn't come. Shane just pins Jim to the ground, his hands behind his back.

"You got no right!" Jim yells. "You got no right!"

"Shh, shh," Shane keeps saying to Jim, like when my dad says  _shh_ over and over when he's trying to get me to stop crying (but I don't cry very often). It seems weird for one grown man to say it to another, but I guess Jim's not really himself, so it's okay.

Jim's still struggling a little.

"Jim, just stop it," Shane says. "Hey, hey, hey, hey! Jim? Nobody's gonna hurt you, you hear me? Shh . . ."

"That's a lie, that's the biggest lie there is," Jim says, and he sounds broken. "I told that to my wife and my two boys. I said it a hundred times. It didn't matter. . ."

That nervous twinge from before comes back, but as something darker, thicker, and I don't want to hear the rest of what Jim has to say, I can already tell.

"They came out of nowhere. There were dozens of 'em . . . just pulled 'em right out of my hands . . ."

His family? The walkers got his family? Pulled them away? I shiver in the heat. I've never even been touched by a walker.

"You know," Jim murmurs, and he's not fighting at all any more, just letting Shane sit on top of him without so much as a twitch in protest, "The only reason I got away was 'cause the dead were too busy eatin' my family."

I think about the deer this morning, and then I think about my Mom, and I don't want to think about that so instead I think about that one day when my dad let me go with him and Merle into an empty convenience store to get food and we found that it wasn't empty at all, and I remember seeing the blood coming from under the hunched, moving bodies of the feasting walkers, and I remember hearing the ripping sounds, and I remember seeing the quickest flash of what used to be a face before being yanked away by my swearing dad, and I think about what if it had been someone in my family under those walkers, and I think about Mom again, and I have such an intense and sudden feeling of hurt for Jim that my throat closes up and I have to turn my face up at the mean, searing sun until the heat is all I can think about anymore.


	4. Survivor

The mean and searing sun gets less mean and searing as it sinks, and sinks, and sinks. By the time it's dark enough to call it late afternoon, Carl and I both know that our dads should be back by now. But they aren't. Neither of us talk about it, though, no, we're mostly quiet, really, sitting here on a log a ways off from the fire – it's too hot to be too close – with me carving a stick into a spear and him watching.

Like I said, we're not talking much – too much to think about – but at one point, out of nowhere, he asks, "Have you seen Sophia's dad?"

By which he means have I seen what Shane did. "Yeah."

"Looks pretty bad, doesn't it?"

"I've seen worse," I say, even though I haven't, not that I can remember. I shove my knife along the stick, cutting off chunks and letting them fall into a scattered pattern at my feet.

"Wish I could have seen Shane do it."

Carl likes that kind of thing. Fights and blood. He says he likes them, anyway, and all that tells me is that he's likely never seen the real thing. I have, so I know. But I don't tell him that. It's not worth it. And then there's more silence between us. The fire crackles, people move and speak in the background, my knife grinds against the stick, and our dads don't get back. _My_ dad doesn't get back.

Carl's the first to speak again. Maybe he's not good with silence. Probably never been hunting. Oh, well, he's alright to talk to. "Did you hear what Jim said when Shane had him on the ground?"

I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I think my body might be trying to send a chill down my back but can't because it's too warm. "'Bout his family?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

From the corner of my eye, I see Carl look at the ground. "I feel bad for him."

I don't say anything. But yes, I feel bad for Jim, too. I feel bad for everyone who lost people, though, and that's just it – you can't feel too much or you can't take it all. And you still always have your own to mourn over, and you've got to save a lot of your sadness for them, I think. It's only fair.

"Is that how you lost your mom? Walkers?"

A sudden, stiff feeling grabs me, from my shoulders to my toes, and I stop moving and breathing for a moment, but then I catch myself and keep going, moving my knife along like nothing happened. Even though my heart is cold now, I say "Yeah," like it's nothing, but I quickly see that I don't care about the spear anymore, I care about getting out of here, away from this talk, and so I hold the thing up, examine it, pretend that I'm disgusted even though I've done a pretty good job, and then I toss it at the fire and I stand. I turn my back to Carl. "We should go. Your mom said she had some problems for us to do out of those books."

I don't look back at him, I'm already walking along, but I think I can feel him watching me. I know I've just confused him. Normally I'm good for talking about death and walkers and stuff. But he'll get over it . . . my mom dying, that's my business. Carl can stay out of it.

Anyway, I think he's gotten too comfortable with me, Carl. That's pointless for both of us. Once my dad gets back with Merle – and he will – we won't be hanging around here, not with the people who left my uncle for dead. We'll be back on our own and Carl, and everyone else here, they'll just be more memories.

. . . . .

Lori, Carol, Carl, Sophia, and I. We're at a little wooden table by some tents, sitting on crates and buckets, and the other two kids and I are working in math textbooks that Glenn managed to bring back from a supply run early on. It's a little hard to focus, since Jim is tied to a tree right across the path, and he's watching us, I know, because even though I keep my head down I sneak peeks at him every now and then with just my eyes, and I nearly always catch him looking when I do. His face is red and tired. Shane just came up to him and is pouring water on his head. Dale's here, too.

I'm drawing a crooked pie chart when I hear, "Sorry if I scared your boy. And your little girl."

Jim. I look up at him again, but this time everyone does and so I don't try to hide it. He's talking to Lori and Carol, of course. Lori's the one who answers, she's the more talkative of the two. She says, "You had sunstroke, nobody's blamin' you."

What 'bout you, Sydney?" Jim asks. "I scare you?"

He knows me by first name because I've watched him work on the RV before. I like Jim. Even after today, even though he makes me just a little bit nervous now, I still like him. I shake my head. "No. I don't scare easy."

He smiles. Well, not really. It's like back in the field, when he grinned but didn't mean it. "Son, your mama's right," he goes on, and he must be talking to Carl now. Yes, that's where his eyes are pointing. "Sun just cooked my head is all."

And even though I like him, or maybe _because_ I do, I wish he wouldn't talk about it anymore.

Dale's saying something now, but I can't hear him, he's speaking low. Lori taps my math book, and I start scribbling out numbers. I can't concentrate, though. I don't like math much, and I can't help but try to listen to Dale instead. I think he asks if Jim knows why he was digging.

Jim answers, but he's talking quietly, too. He says something about a dream, though, I catch that.

Then, louder, so I don't have to work to hear: "Your dads were in it. Y'all were, too."

And my head jerks up.

Jim looks like he's far away in his head, but his unfocused eyes, they never stop looking at Carl and me, bouncing back and forth between us. "You kids were worried about them," he says. "Can't remember the rest . . ."

I swallow and crack two fingers at a time.

_Sydney!_ Mom says. _I said don't do that!_

"You kids worried about your dads?"

I don't answer, because admitting I'm worried about my dad would be admitting that there's something to worry about, and there isn't. My dad, he's tough. He can handle himself.

But Carl, Carl must not be so sure. His voice is wrong when he says, "They're not back yet."

_And they should be,_ I finish, but I don't speak up. Nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong, nothing's _too_ wrong, anyway, they just hit a snag, because things happen . . .

"We don't need to talk about that," Lori says to Jim, rubbing Carl's back.

My pencil somehow went from scribbling the number four-hundred-thirty-seven to drawing a never-ending loopty-loop. A target, maybe. I raise my pencil and tap it fiercely down, right in the middle, and it leaves a heavy, dark mark.

Then Jim starts talking again, even though Lori didn't want him to. He's only talking to Carl, though, I can tell that after the first sentence. "Your dad's a police officer, son," he says. "He helps people. Probably just came across some folks needin' help, that's all."

_Helps people?_ I grit my teeth hard enough to hurt. _Like he helped Merle?_ I get angry, but it's not a normal type of angry, it's bigger, and I feel it grow up inside of me, wrapping itself in and around my stomach and chest and tightening and pressing on my insides. But I squeeze my lips together, pushing my pencil into the center of the target and scribbling some more, laying it all on thick, kind of like Jim is, because he still hasn't stopped with this speech of his, and oh, I wish he would.

"That man, he's tough as nails. I don't know him well, but . . . I could see it in him. Am I right?"

"Oh, yeah," I hear Shane answer. He means it, too, I can tell. Good for Rick. Wonderful, perfect Rick. Forget Daryl Dixon. What has he ever done around here, except feed the camp and not leave a man to die on a roof?

My paper rips under my pencil, just a little, and I stop my scribbles, and I realize my fingers are wrapped in a fist around the pencil and I think I see a tiny crack in the yellow wood that wasn't there before.

"And Sydney?"

What? Me? No, my dad's not a police officer. Nobody around here would ever call my dad as brave as Rick, or as good as Rick, even though he is, he's as good and as brave and better, and I don't give a damn what –

"That goes for your daddy, too."

I stare at Jim. My fist loosens.

"Don't you worry," he tells me, his eyes wide and honest. "He's a survivor."

I stare some more, then I nod slowly. A survivor. That's right. Rick may be a _hero_ , so they say, but my dad's a survivor. That's even better, these days. A survivor.

"Y'all trust me on this," Jim goes on, and his eyes are back to switching between Carl and me, but I take all of his words for myself, because I like them and I want to keep them for as long as I need to. "There ain't nothin' gonna stop those two from gettin' back here to you, I promise you that."

It's quiet. Then Shane says he needs help cleaning fish, the fish that Amy and Andrea caught, because we're going to have a fish fry tonight, and Carl and Sophia and I jump up and leave the table and the math behind us. But I look at Jim one more time before I follow after Shane. He's not looking at me now, he's looking straight ahead, and I think he's crying, and that makes me uncomfortable, so I turn away and run.


	5. Fish Fry

"I, uh, built up the rocks all around," Morales is saying to Lori later. He's talking about one of the fire pits they've built for tonight, for that fish fry. He gestures at the thing now. "So the flames can be a little higher, and have them be hidden." He smiles. Lori smiles back. I sigh, staring at the stacked rocks without really looking. Mom called that zoning out. She always said I was bad about it, especially in church.

A sharp pain on my scalp brings me back to now. "Ouch!"

"Sorry, sorry," Amy murmurs from behind me. She moves the brush through the problem tangle again, this time slower, with her hand pressing into my skull to numb the pain. I hear the bristles fighting the knots. "But Sydney, when was the last time you brushed your hair?"

Days, probably. I don't remember. Mom used to remind me, and Dad tries, but he's not very good about it. Never has been. "I don't know."

People are unfolding chairs all around us. Pulling up more stumps like the one I'm on. Preparing for the fish fry, which is supposed to be fun. I might enjoy it, I know, on any other day. But I don't think I'll be able to tonight. Survivor or not, I won't rest easy until my dad gets back.

. . . . .

I _do_ enjoy the fish fry, though.

It's not that I don't worry about my dad. It's just that I forget about him being gone. I lose myself in the talking and the laughter and the good food, the fish I didn't have to catch, and every few minutes I'll remember Dad's gone and feel bad, but then I forget again. It's a relief.

I just remembered, though. So now I look down at my plate and grab the fish there, and I take a huge bite and make an effort to lose myself in the greasy taste and the fire-lit night and the conversation, which is now about Dale's watch. Dale's watch? Why do they care about Dale's watch? Oh, well. I listen, trying to make myself get back to the forgetting.

"I see you, every day, same time, winding that thing," Morales says, leaning forward in his chair. "Like a village priest saying mass."

Andrea nods eagerly, her mouth full of food. Lori laughs. This is the most crowded fire, it has lots of people I know. Carl is to my left, beside his mom. Even Jim's here – Shane untied him earlier, said he was back to normal. Jacqui's talking now.

"I've wondered this myself," she says, laughing.

Dale smiles, raising his hands. "I'm missing the point."

I squint across the fire, see his watch in the shadows. It doesn't look special. I eat more fish.

"Unless I've misread the signs," Jacqui continues, "The world seems to have come to an end. At least hit a speed bump for a good long while."

"But there's you," says Morales to Dale, and beside me, Louis and Eliza giggle. "Every day, winding that stupid watch."

"Time," says Dale, lounging back in his chair. "It's important to keep track, isn't it? The days, at least?"

Maybe the days. Yeah. That way we know when it's Christmas, or someone's birthday. Wait, though. Do we still celebrate those things? Surely. I have to ask my dad –

He's not here.

No, can't think about that. I close my eyes, hard, so my cheeks hurt, then open them again and set my empty plate at my feet. I lean forward, watch sparks and smoke fly up into the night, and just listen. Dale's talking.

"I like what a father said to son when he gave him a watch that had been handed down through generations. He said, 'I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire, which will fit your individual needs no better than it did mine, or my father's before me; I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you may forget it for a moment, now and then, and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it.'"

It's quiet then. Morales grins at Dale from across the fire, nodding like he's gotten an answer, but I don't understand. I don't know what father and son Dale means, but I hope the son was older than me, or else I doubt he got any of that, and it was all to waste.

More quiet. Then, "You are so weird," says Amy.

And we all laugh, and yes, that includes me, I laugh, because it's funny and I'm warm and full and with nice people and right now, this moment, things are okay. Dale says the words aren't his, they're somebody named Faulkner's, but whatever, we laugh anyway. I keep smiling even once the laughs have stopped.

Amy gets up. Andrea asks where she's going.

"I have to pee," Amy says. "Geez, you try to be discreet around here . . ." She walks off to the RV, and we're all laughing again.

This is a good night.

Dad'll get back. He will. He and Merle, they'll get back, but maybe we won't have to leave. Maybe . . . we could stay, right? These are good people. And I know I thought Carl was getting too comfortable with me, but that might be okay. Mom used to say it was important for me to have friends my own age, and I did, I had lots of friends, but they're all gone now . . . Carl could be my friend.

I look over at him. His mouth is full of fish, and he's grinning, listening to something his mom's saying. Yes, Carl could be my friend. And maybe so could Louis. And Eliza and Sophia, if they toughened up a bit –

"We're out of toilet paper?"

I turn. It's Amy, standing at the door of the RV, propping it open and looking out at the rest of us.

A man comes up to her. Only it's not a man.

But I realize that too late. And so does Amy, because she doesn't scream until the walker – because of course it's a walker – has its teeth in her arm. But when she screams, it's loud, it goes through the camp like an alarm, and all the air from my lungs is gone as the people around me and the good night fall away into messiness and noise and living, moving terror.

Walkers appear from nowhere, it seems, but I guess they must be coming out of the woods. I'm standing suddenly, everybody's standing suddenly, and I whirl this way, and that way, and no matter where I turn I see the stumbling dark figures of the walkers, and they're nearing, and people are running all around me –

"Mom!"

Carl, that was Carl. His mom cries his name back. I turn, I find them, I reach out and grab at Lori's shirt, and she latches onto my wrist so tightly it hurts, she's stronger than she looks, and then she's tugging Carl and I, tugging us to Shane.

"Lori, get him down!" Shane yells. He has his shotgun up. He pumps it and aims.

Screams everywhere.

Shane shoots, once, twice, three and four times. I don't look to see what he hits. Lori has Carl and me squatting down, our heads under her arms. But I can't stay that way, I can't not look, so I twist my head and see what I can. Over there, Jim, he's got a baseball bat, he's hitting a walker in the head, the head crumples into a mess, and the body falls . . . Dale, where's Dale, I don't see Dale . . . Andrea? Oh, Amy, oh my God, Amy . . . And there, over by the tents, the man named Ricky who took over watch earlier, he's being eaten, _he's being eaten,_ and he's wailing, and I'm looking at his guts being yanked from his body by rotting teeth.

Gunshots all over, gunshots and moans, moans and screaming, the screaming is the worst, it doesn't stop, and my ears hurt, and oh, that walker's close, that walker, with the horrible long red hair and blue blazer that my mother would have liked, and then _BOOM_ and that walker's on the ground, her head broken and spilling . . .

Lori's standing straight. We're moving now. She has one arm on Shane's back, one arm around Carl, and I'm holding onto her shirt and going with her, staying close, staying close, and she's asking Shane _What do we do, what do we do?_ and wait, do I have my knife? Yes, there it is, and I grip its hilt with my free hand, but I don't draw it, not yet, but if I have to I can, but will that really help me? How much damage can I do? I'm so small, I –

"Shane?" says Lori.

"Follow me!" Shane yells to the entire camp, but I can't believe they all hear him.

_"No, no!"_ I hear from somewhere, loud and crazy and so, so desperate, like an animal that's been shot wrong.

Wait, Shane said follow him? Follow him where? Where's safe? Where's safe? Oh, I don't want to die, not like this, not . . .

We're still moving. "Come on, come on, stay close!" yells Shane.

Lori says Carol's name, and yes, there's Carol, right behind us, holding Sophia in her arms, and oh, where's Dad, where's Merle –

"Stay close!"

My knife, I still have my knife? Yes, yes, I do. Oh, God. I can't use it, I don't think so, I –

I pull closer to Lori, even as my feet move along the ground, going with our small group, moving where? Moving to the RV, of course, the RV, our only chance at safety, but it won't work, it won't, the walkers are all over the place, they're close, they're – oh, I'm going to die. Mom told me I wouldn't. Dad told me I wouldn't. I am, though, I'm going to die.

No. No. Not here, not with Lori and Shane and Carl, no, I'm safe, I'll be fine, please, God –

"Come on, y'all!" shouts Shane. "Work your way up here!"

To the RV, yes, where it's safe, where it has to be safe.

"Right in front of you!" That was Lori. "Shane!"

Shane's gun is up then, and I look forward, I can't help it, and there's a gunshot and a walker falls, and it was in front of us, right in front of us, how are we going to make it to the RV? Oh, please . . .

They're so close now. Three, four walkers, we pass by them and they moan and growl but we're fast enough to slip by and they don't chase us, too many people already down and ready to be fed on, and Morales is there, by the fire pit he was so proud of, ramming a bat this way and that, and where are Louis and Eliza? There, there they are, they're close to us, they're with their mom, and now our group has turned, moved around, and our backs are to the RV, and I lean against it and Carl grips his mom and I hold her shirt, and I just watch, I watch, and I don't want to, but I do, I watch it all happen. I watch the walkers and I hear the screaming. I see blood and flesh from the living and the dead. Gunshots. So many gunshots.

Where's Dale? Where's Amy? Where's Andrea?

My knife's out now but it hangs loosely by my side, my fingers limp around it, and I'm scared, I'm scared, and I don't scare easy, but I'm scared.

And then, in a way that is fast and slow and I don't even know how, the walkers are less and less, and I watch their heads explode, one by one, _BOOM BOOM BOOM,_ and then I don't see any anymore. They're all down. They're all down?

A man calls for Carl, and he steps forward out of the darkness, and I see that he's wearing a cowboy hat and it's Rick, it's Carl's dad, and Carl runs to him, and then I look around, I look around, because my dad, my dad, he has to be –

Yes. Yes, there he is. He's coming over here now. I drop the knife and run to him. Dad throws down the gun he was carrying and comes down to his knees, and then he's holding me close, and I wrap my arms around him as tight as I can, and he shouldn't have gone, I knew he shouldn't have gone.

"You ain't bit?" he says, breathing hard. I shake my head and say "no" into his shoulder, and it's muffled and I can't even hear myself, and he takes my head into his hands and asks again and I say, no, I'm not bit, and then he grabs the gun from the ground and stands, turning his back to the RV, one hand holding the gun and the other holding my shoulder, and he's scanning the camp and I am, too, but no, no walkers, not anymore. They're all dead. Dead? They're all down.

T-Dog's back. Glenn's back. I look around at us all. Lori, Carl, Rick. Sophia and Carol. Shane. Morales and his family, yes, Louis and Eliza, they're fine. Dale, Dale's here. Jacqui. So many are missing. I look back at the camp, the ruined, stained camp, and I see them then. Amy and Andrea. I make a high-pitched noise that isn't quite a scream, and it doesn't sound like me but it is, I know it is, and Dad squeezes my arm. Amy's on the ground, right by the RV door. She's covered in blood. Andrea's over her, moving her hands along her sister, but there's nothing that can be done, no, no, there's so much blood . . . and Amy's not moving . . .

I hear Carl crying.

"No, no, no!" wails Andrea.

I'm gasping. It's hard to breathe. I bury my face in Dad's shirt and I don't look up again, but I can't stop hearing.

"Amy! _Amy!"_

"I remember my dream now," Jim says somewhere. Jim. Jim's alive. "Why I dug the holes."

And it takes me a minute to get what he means by that, and when I do, I hug Dad and clench my teeth together and try not to cry too much, but I do, I cry a lot.


	6. Power In Numbers

The night, awful as it is, blurs by.

First, outside, there's talking and tears, and then Dad carries me into the back room of the RV. I hear lots of footsteps, the floor creaking, a door closing. I ask where Merle is, Dad says we won't talk about it now, and he puts me onto the bed. I curl up in it and he leaves. There's someone else here – two people, Sophia and Eliza, we're all crammed together on too small of a bed, tangled up in too small of a blanket, and it's too hot for a blanket but we all pull for it anyway as the hours pass. I don't feel like I sleep, but then the dark's gone so fast that I think I must have after all, and it's then, right when the sunlight begins to fall into this little room and I wake up or come out of a daze or whatever, when the sounds begin.

There's talking and grunting. Some shouting. Heavy things being moved . . . dragged. But the noise that stands out the most is the chopping-wood sound that I know – and it makes me feel sick to know – has nothing to do with wood.

I sit up carefully, because Sophia and Eliza are still sleeping beside me. There's another bed across the room, I forgot about that. Carl and Louis lie there. I can't see Louis, his back is to me, but Carl's face is swollen. There are tearstains on his cheeks. Immediately I reach up with both hands and rub my own face, hard, hopefully removing any remaining signs of crying. Then I look out the window above this bed. The blinds are down, but there's an opening at the bottom big enough to see out of, and I stare through it at the sad world.

I can't see too much from here, but what I see is enough. There's a fire not far from this window, a little to the right, but it's not a campfire . . . Underneath the flames are twisted, blackened shapes, shapes that are all-too familiar and terribly out of place.

Bodies. Bodies, bodies, so many bodies.

Not just in the fire, either. No, as I turn my head, I see that there are still bodies on the ground, bodies of geeks and bodies of people. I see the bloody carcass of what used to be that man Ricky and I swallow. And there, right there, almost out of my line of vision, I see Andrea leaning over torn-up Amy, just like she was last night. Has she moved at all?

Amy. Amy's dead. Amy was nice, she was so nice . . .

I try to focus on the living now, but that doesn't help, because all they're doing is dealing with the dead. Moving corpses. Prodding the fire. Taking care of the bodies still strewn about . . . meaning nailing them in the head. The brain, the dead have to be hit in the brain. _Our_ dead, the people who were attacked, bitten, eaten. They have to be hit in the brain before we do anything else, so they don't come back as walkers.

That's the sound I was hearing earlier, the worst sound. And it's why my dad, over by the main campfire, has a pickaxe over his shoulder. Even from here, I can tell the pickaxe is bloody.

Dad, he's talking to Rick. Lori and Shane are there, too. Dad's pointing – at Amy and Andrea. Amy, her head looks fine. I figure that's the problem. Andrea must not have let them . . .

I lean my head down and press my mouth into my arm. A sob tries to work its way out of me, but no, no way. I cried last night and that was enough. I'm tough, Dad's always told me that. I can't go around crying all the time . . .

_"We don't burn them!"_

I press my forehead to the warm window again, fast. I feel the other girls stir beside me.

That was Glenn, yelling. I spy him over by the pile of burning corpses, and my dad's in front of him, with Morales, and they're dragging a body over to the fire.

I make myself look closer at it, that fire. Most of the bodies are already scorched beyond recognition, but some have been added recently enough that I can still make out that they're geeks. Not people. None of them are people.

I listen hard, because Glenn's talking lower now. "We _bury_ them. Understand?" He points. "Our people go in that row over there."

Someone sits up beside me. Eliza. I make room for her, and we watch our dads – mine looking sour about it – haul the dead man across the ground, coming close enough to our window for us almost to touch their heads, and just when the two are out of sight, at the other end of the RV, I hear Dad yell, "Reap what you sow!"

Eliza's dad tells him to shut up. I think I hear the body drop.

"Y'all left my brother for _dead!"_ Dad walks back into view, across the campsite, right in the middle of everything. I watch with a knot in my chest as he points around at the bodies, at the gore, at the fire. _"You had this comin'!_ "

His tone and his words and his face all come together to hit me hard. I try to suppress a wince, but can't completely, and I hear Eliza gasp beside me and have to pretend I don't.

But Dad . . . Dad's right. These people, they did leave Merle. My uncle. They just left him.

Reap what you sow.

Wait, so is Merle dead?

Movement from behind me, shifting and the sounds of cloth on cloth, and then, as if on cue, Sophia's upright and Carl's on the bed and at my side, with Louis peeking out just beside him. Sophia lies back down after a few seconds. She nestles her head into her arms. I watch her back heave soundlessly, but I don't say anything. I wouldn't know where to start. Carl, though, Carl puts his hand on her back, and Eliza reaches back to stroke Sophia's hair.

"A walker got him! A walker bit Jim!"

I twist my head back around, fast enough to almost hurt. Jim's standing in the center of camp. The other grownups, they're circling around him, all spaced a ways away. Jacqui, Jacqui's the one who spoke, and she's moving back from Jim, but he's not doing anything, he's just standing there, looking this way and that, palms showing.

But he's _bitten?_

Dread weighs me down as I watch the man, looking around at all of these people, who move around him like he's . . . like he's a walker. Jim. Jim, who was so nice yesterday about my dad . . .

And it's him, it's my dad, who speaks next. "Show it to us!" he says, harshly, moving closer to Jim, his pickaxe propped on his shoulder. _"Show it to us!"_

I don't make a decision to leave the bed, I really think I don't. My legs just _move_ , and then I'm at the front of the RV, and down the stairs, and in the doorway, and there the sun blares cruelly onto my already overheated face, and my feet have enough good sense to stop there, at least. Carl is beside me a second later, and together, we squint and observe with open mouths as Jim picks up a shovel and braces it in front of him like a weapon. But he doesn't look fierce, even like that. He looks scared, like a trapped animal that bares its teeth in a last-ditch effort . . .

Everybody's talking. Loudly. Shane's telling Jim to put down the shovel, just like yesterday, and my dad's saying to grab him, grab Jim . . . and then T-Dog does. He comes up behind Jim and yanks his arms around his back, knocking away the shovel, and then Dad's dropped the pickaxe and moved to Jim, and he pulls up his shirt, and then I see it, I see the bite, red and glaring and right there, right on his stomach, and Jim's going to die, he's going to die.

Dad backs off and so does T-Dog. Things get quiet, everyone gets quiet, except for Jim himself. Jim, he says, "I'm okay," and his hands lower. His voice is soft and strange, his eyes darting around from one face to the next underneath his dirty ball cap. "I'm okay, I'm okay . . ."

But he's not.

Then, _"Hey!"_

My eyes go to Dad, who's turned and seen me. He's coming this way, pointing at the door. "Get back inside right now! _Right now!"_

And I do, of course, I dart up the stairs and to the back room again, into the shade and the slightly cooler air, but my heart is pounding and it doesn't feel like it wants to slow down. I rest on the bed and stare at the floor, ignoring the looks from Eliza and Louis and trying not to listen to the uneven breathing of Sophia. In my mind, I see the bite. And I see Jim's face.

Carl's on the bed across from me. I look at him once, but not for long. A minute passes before all of us – except Sophia – end up at the window again. Mom would have said all of this, all of what's happening outside, is like a car wreck – terrible, and nothing you should want to look at, but you just can't help it.

Our parents and the others have gathered in a circle at the center of camp. I don't know where Jim is. Us kids, we wait and watch and nothing interesting happens for a while, just the grownups speaking, Rick seeming more enthusiastic than the others, and I finally find my eyes slipping over to Amy and Andrea, still in the same spot. Just as I do that, though, there's a blur to my right, and I look, and Dad's charging at something, that pickaxe high over his head.

"Somebody needs to have some balls to take care of this _damn problem!"_

Eliza whimpers, and I bounce past her and over to the window on the other wall, the one at the very end of the RV. Carl and Louis beat me there, scrambling onto a table to get high enough to peer down through the dirty glass. I pull myself up beside them and make room for myself, and I look, and it's Jim sitting there.

Jim. Dad charged at Jim.

But he's stopped. No, Rick's stopped him. Rick – Rick has a gun to Dad's head.

My body feels like stone. No, ice. In spite of the Georgia heat, my body has managed to turn to ice.

I watch as Rick and Shane surround my dad, with Shane in between Dad and Jim, and Dad scowls, but Rick lowers the gun, and then my dad slams the pickaxe into the ground and stalks away. I let out a breath, and my throat quivers and makes it sound weird.

Shane walks off, too. Rick reaches down and pulls Jim up, and then they're all gone, and there's nothing to see from here anymore. But us in the RV, we still don't move.

Silence for a moment. Then Carl says, "Your dad was gonna kill him. He was gonna kill Jim."

My fingers tighten around the windowsill. I turn my head slowly. My eyes narrow at this kid, and my voice doesn't sound like me when I say, "And _your_ dad had a gun to my dad's head."

. . . . .

An hour passes before anything else grabs our attention. The RV is hot and quiet and boring and suffocating when the gunshot rings out. And then to the window we go yet again.

Amy's been shot. Her head . . . she's been shot.

Andrea has a gun. Andrea has _the_ gun, I think. And she just keeps leaning over her sister's dead body, her sister's really, _truly_ dead body, and she cries.

. . . . .

And so we bury them. All of the dead, all of _our_ dead, who were alive just hours ago and eating fish and having a good night. We do it up in the field where Jim dug the holes, only now Shane and Rick have dug more and made them all deeper. The bodies are wrapped in canvas, old sleeping bags, torn bits of tent, just a lot of "it'll do" material we don't need anymore. I watch as the graves are filled, one by one, some corpses lowered and some kind of plopped. Dad helps with a few. I know some of their names, these people who are rolled up and hidden from the world forever, put in the ground and covered with dirt, like seeds that won't grow. Ed Peletier is laid in his hole by Rick and Shane – though Shane doing it seems wrong to me – and I hear Carol's little high-pitched sobs. I don't hear anything from Sophia, but I've already learned she's a quiet crier.

Dad and I are standing off to the side from everybody else during Ed's turn. His hand is on my shoulder, and he doesn't pat, the way Mom might have, he just rests it there and sometimes strokes his thumb back and forth. The weight of his hand is the most calming thing I've felt all day, and I lean against him as Shane and Rick let Sophia's dead father tumble into the earth with a _thud_.

The last body is Amy, and Andrea won't let any of the men carry her to her grave. She does it herself. Dale stays by her and watches, looking worried and constantly moving his hands down to the body, but Andrea tells him she can do it, she can do it, and she drags the bundle that's really her sister across the ground and it falls roughly into the grave.

I don't cry. And when it's all over, I ride back down the hill with Dad in his truck, which they used to carry the bodies up. I look back into the empty bed, fresh blood drying on the grimy surface, and I ask Dad what's going to happen now, where we're going, because I know we can't stay here.

He says he's not sure yet.

I ask if we're staying with the others.

"Looks like it. For now, anyway."

I really want to ask about Merle next. Dad hasn't told me anything about what happened, and I almost can't take it, I need to know if my uncle's dead. And if he's not, I _need_ to know why he isn't here. I can tell Dad doesn't want to talk about it right now, and so I bite my tongue, but I can't do that for long and I know it.

Back at the campsite, things look so empty. So messy and wrong. There's still blood in places on the ground, unnatural black splotches standing out against the dirt. Someone tossed a sheet over the pile of burned geeks, and the mound is over at the edge of camp, but it's so big and glaring that it's hard to ignore, hard to not think about what's under it. All of us – us few remaining survivors – we're close to one campfire, the big one Morales stacked the rocks around. Some fish is being passed around, left over from last night. Dad has me take some, and I nibble at it, but I'm just not hungry. The stuff was delicious last night, I can remember thinking that, but now the taste of it sparks fear and sadness. I toss my piece away when Dad's not looking.

Eventually, I walk over to the RV. I don't look at the spot where Amy lay. After a few minutes of searching, I find my knife, hiding behind one of the back tires. I rub it off on my jeans and slip it back into its sheath before I go back to the fire and sit down in a very uncomfortable chair made of plastic. I don't look at Carl, which is hard, because he's directly across from me. I just stare at the flames and let my mind do what it wants.

I thought maybe Carl and I could be friends, but I was wrong. Carl is Rick's son. Rick left my uncle. Rick pointed a gun at my dad. If we're staying with this group, Dad must have a good reason, a _really_ good reason, but that doesn't mean I have to trust Rick. Or _like_ Rick. Or Carl. I was wrong before, and it was stupid of me – I can't be friends with a kid whose dad treats my family like that. Like they're disposable, like it wouldn't matter to lose them.

Time passes, and nobody does anything, really, they just talk. No laundry or cooking. I understand. Stuff like that doesn't seem to have a point now. This camp, and all of its spilled blood, its breached walls, its walker-infested territory . . . all as good as history. What are we waiting for, then? What's the plan, the next move? Where are we going? I search the faces, and I don't see Rick or Shane. Or Dale, come to think of it, but he wouldn't be the one to have the plan.

Dad paces around behind me. He's carrying a gun, a shotgun, and that comforts me. Makes me feel safer. Dad's the best shot I know.

I wish for a book. I wish for my friend Tyler, and I wish for Mom, too. And Merle.

It's close to evening when Rick, Shane, and Dale finally show up, emerging from the woods with guns in their hands. They must have been out searching around, checking for walkers, and for the first time, it hits me that we'll be staying here again tonight. Something inside of me sinks low, into an empty place. I look over my shoulder as my dad comes forward to hear what the other men have to say.

Shane kneels down beside the fire, and the murmured conversation dies completely. He begins by saying that he's been thinking about Rick's plan, and Dad didn't tell me Rick had a plan, but I don't interrupt. Shane says he's known Rick for a long time and he trusts his instincts. He says he thinks the most important thing is for us all to stay together.

Power in numbers. I've heard that somewhere.

I look around at us all. Me, Dad, Shane, Rick, Carl, Lori, Andrea, the Morales family, Dale, Glenn, Carol, Sophia, Jacqui. Jim's in the RV, but he won't be around much longer.

There might be power in numbers, but our numbers aren't much anymore.

Shane says that those of us who agree, agree about staying together, we leave first thing in the morning. I glance up at Dad and he gives me a nod, so I know that, yes, we're leaving with them. He hasn't changed his mind about staying with this group.

And on the edge of my mind, nagging and gnawing like a dog: _But what about Merle?_

. . . . .

"And Rick thinks there might be a cure for Jim there? At the CDC?"

"Yeah," Dad answers, and he says it so shortly that I know he doesn't think there's any hope in it. But we're still going, and I don't understand, and I hate not understanding, and I think about Dad charging at Jim today but don't bring that up. My dad, he knows what he's doing, I got to believe that.

It's night again and we're in our tent. I like our tent. It's one we've used for years, and lately sometimes, when I can't sleep, I pretend I'm just out hunting with my dad on one of his weekends. Back before the walkers.

Tonight, though, I doubt I'll be able to do that. Even though Merle always had his own tent, it still seems like something's missing from Dad's and mine. Maybe it has something to do with the quiet of the camp outside. The lack of coughing, or snoring, or tents being zipped and unzipped. The lack of people. It's _eerie_ , Mrs. Gladson – my teacher last year – would say if she were here. She loved doing vocabulary words, loved bringing them up in all subjects, not just reading.

But she's dead now, I'm sure. One way or another. I curl deeper into my sleeping bag and look up at my dad, sitting beside me, and not for the first time today, I feel very glad that he's here, with me, and he's fine, he's not dead in any sense of the word.

Dad presses the edges of the bag in around me, and even just by the dim light of the little electronic lamp in the center of our tent, I can see how tired he is. Then I think that he probably hasn't really slept in two or three days, and I feel bad about what I'm about to ask him, but I can't help it anymore. I need to know.

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"What . . ." And I can't, I can't. "What if more geeks come tonight?"

He squeezes the slippery material of the sleeping bag tighter in around my shoulders, his hands careful. I feel the stuff warm up against my shirt. "We got people on top of the RV, keepin' watch." Dad gestures over at his sleeping bag. His crossbow and his shotgun sit right by his pillow. "And you got me right here. Nothin's gonna get at you, Syd."

One thing I love about my dad is how he has this way of changing his voice up, from scary to normal to gentle, and that last one's my favorite. That's the one he's using now. He saves it mostly for me, I think.

I wasn't going to ask about the geeks, though, not really. That's just what came out because I got nervous. But I'm not chicken, and I have to try again, so as Dad starts to move over to his side of the tent I say, "Dad, you haven't told me about Uncle Merle."

He stops and looks at me, and his face has turned strange, but I don't think he's mad. Not at me, anyway. I widen my eyes, like a puppy, just in case. I remember Dad and Shane talking yesterday and I reuse Dad's own words, stealing the same even tone: "He dead?"

Dad rubs a hand over his eyes. "Nah, he ain't dead."

Relief. Followed by anxiety. "Then where is he? What happened?"

My dad looks at the sealed flap leading to outside. That makes me sigh. I sit up. "Dad?" I prod, because I need to know. I _deserve_ to know. He's blood, Merle is, and I got to find out what the hell happened to him.

I don't say that to Dad, of course. But he gets it, I think, and he tells me the story.

. . . . .

I'm lying back down by the time he's done. I've pressed my mouth into the sleeping bag and I'm watching the lamp shine away in the background. When I shut my eyes, I can still see the outline of it against the black.

And I see a hand. A bloody, abandoned hand.

My stomach hurts and I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter. I feel Dad's hand on my shoulder. "Hey, now," he murmurs. "C'mon, I wouldn'ta told you if I thought you couldn't handle it. Be my tough girl."

And so I inhale and nod, and I'm not crying, I'm _not_. I look up at Dad and blink until his shadowy shape is perfectly clear, and I peel apart my lips. "So why didn't he come back? If he took the van, why didn't he just come back here?"

"'Cause he don't want nothin' to do with Rick now. Or any of 'em."

"But what about us?"

Dad's quiet for a minute. "I don't know, Little Bit. I don't know exactly what he's thinkin'. You know your uncle. He ain't really all there sometimes."

He's trying to joke a little with that last bit, but I don't laugh. It's not funny. Merle didn't come back here. Dad and I are here, and we're his family, but Merle _didn't come back here._

My next question is surprising, even to me. "But why're _we_ stayin', Dad?"

"What?"

"Why're we stayin' with them?" I repeat, my voice keeping to a whisper but my words sounding mad. "They left Merle there. They made him . . . They made him cut off his hand." That's hard to say, but I say it anyway, and it sounds fine, I just can't let myself picture it, as much as I can help it. "Why're _we_ staying here?"

"'Cause it's safer here, Sydney," Dad says, and his voice is starting to lose that gentle tone, so I know my time to press him is running out. "Tell me somethin' – you feel safer now, here, with these people all around us all the time, or out on our own, like we were before? Just you, me, and Merle?"

I stare at him. " _You_ said we were safe back then," I eventually answer, and my voice is small.

"Yeah, and we were," he says. " _You_ were, I was there, you wouldn'ta gotten hurt. But here, here's even better."

He doesn't explain why, but I know my time to ask questions is gone, so I just look back at the lamp, and my eyes hurt, and I mutter, "Power in numbers."

He snorts. "Yeah." After a moment, he rests his hand on my shoulder again. I look at him as he says, seriously, "Hey. We're gonna be just fine. You hear me?"

"Yeah."

"Alright." He moves his hand in a circle on my back one time before moving away. "Go to sleep."

And so I close my eyes and roll over, and before long I hear the lamp switch off. But it takes me awhile to fall asleep, and I think it does for Dad, too, because at one point a half-hour later when something snaps outside of our tent and I sit straight up, looking around and feeling for my knife, Dad says through the darkness, "Shh, baby girl, you're fine. It ain't nothin'. Go to sleep."

And so I lie back down, but I swear I can hear him gripping his crossbow from here.


	7. The Drive Away

"Alright, everybody listen up," Shane says the next morning, and I look up at him, alert even though the sun's barely up. All the other kids look like they'd rather be sleeping, but not me, the early riser. I like this time of day. Best time to get things started.

The entire group – minus Jim, I'm not sure if he's even considered part of the group anymore – is gathered at the center of the camp one last time. The vehicles are loaded and we're about to leave for the CDC. Shane's giving us his final talk – "verbal preparation," my mother would say, that's what she always does – did – with her clients before going into the courtroom. Give them the lowdown of what to expect and what they would do.

"Those of you with CBs," Shane's saying from his place beside Rick, both hands casually holding his shotgun to his waist as he surveys us all, "we're going to be on channel 40, but let's keep the chatter down, okay? Now, you have a problem, don't have a CB, can't get a signal, or anything at all, you're gonna hit your horn one time. That'll stop the caravan."

I glance up at my dad and catch him rubbing his eyes. I know he didn't sleep much last night. He sees me looking and roughly tousles my already tangled hair.

"Any questions?" Shane asks.

"We're, uh . . ." begins Morales. He sounds nervous, but he meets Shane's eyes. "We're not going."

Shane just stares at him. Rick's mouth opens a bit. They're shocked.

And _I'm_ shocked . . . My own mouth gapes, in fact, just like Rick's, and I close it as soon as I catch myself. But what is Morales thinking?

I see Eliza tuck her head into her mother's chest as Mrs. Morales softly explains, "We have family in Birmingham. We want to be with our people."

Birmingham? Alabama, yes, Alabama, I remember now. I don't know exactly how far away Birmingham is, but it's far. And going it alone? With just Morales being able to handle a gun, as far as I know?

God bless Shane. I'm silent, my tongue's dry, but he says, "Go on your own, you won't have anyone to watch your back."

"We'll take the chance," Morales replies. "I've gotta do what's best for _my_ family."

I feel my face wrinkle up, my hands ball into fists. How is this what's best for Louis and Eliza? Taking them away from the group, from the power in numbers? Then I remember that just last night I was asking my dad why we shouldn't leave, and l realize I'm a – what's it called? – a hypocrite, and _then_ I realize that I just don't like the idea of Louis and Eliza not being here, because when all's said and done, they're alright, and I –

_Stop._ I bite my knuckle, bite back the uncomfortable feelings blowing up inside of me like a balloon, trying to fill my chest, working on pressing into my throat.

Rick asks Morales if he's sure. Morales looks at his wife. Yes, they've talked about it. They're sure.

My heel digs angrily into the ground, saying everything my voice won't.

"Alright," Rick says in a way that tells me he doesn't think Morales is doing the right thing, either, and for a second I forget that I don't like Rick. He and Shane bend over the gun bag at their feet and, after a few seconds of muttering, choose out a handgun and a box of bullets. Both are handed to Morales.

"Box is half full," Shane says solemnly. Above me, Dad makes a quiet spitting noise, and he takes a few steps away and then back. He's frustrated, but I don't know why, so I just look at the ground, chewing the skin off my finger.

"Thank you all," says Mrs. Morales. "For everything . . ."

From the corner of my eye, I see Lori slide down from her place beside Carl on the hood of Carol's Cherokee. I tilt my head, just a little, to get a better look at Carl, and I see his eyes are wet. Again. Lori, meanwhile, goes to Mrs. Morales and hugs her close, then kisses Louis on the head, then Eliza. Shane and Rick shake Morales's hand. I meet Louis's eyes, pretty much by accident, and after an uncomfortable moment I just swallow and give him a nod, the way grownups do to one another. He gives me the same. Eliza runs to tearfully hug Sophia, and I watch her give her that doll that I scorned, and as Eliza begins to turn around I turn as well, turn away, and press the side of my face into Dad's shirt, avoiding eye contact, avoiding a goodbye. No tears. No tears. Dad smoothes his hand over my head.

More murmurs. Sniffling. "Channel 40," Rick repeats. "If you change your minds."

And then footsteps, and words, always so many words, and finally Shane calls, "Let's go! Let's move out!"

"C'mon," Dad says, nudging me, and I pull away from him and we walk to his truck, sitting at the edge of camp – what used to be camp. Merle's motorcycle is loaded in back. I stare at it for a moment before walking around to the passenger's side and climbing into the truck, this good old truck. I run my hands over the worn out seat, breathe in the familiar and somehow nice scent of dirt, sweat, and cigarettes.

Dad starts the engine and I roll down my window. I lean out too far and Dad wordlessly pulls me back by my shirt. I lean out again, just less, and watch as everyone starts to move. We leave the campsite in this order: The vehicle belonging to the Morales family, which takes a right turn where the gravel road meets the asphalt one (everyone else takes a left); Dale's RV, with Glenn at shotgun and Jacqui and sick, feverish, walker-to-be Jim in back; Carol's Cherokee – which Rick is driving – with Lori and Carl and Sophia and Carol herself; T-Dog's church van, carrying himself and Andrea, poor Andrea; my dad's truck; Shane's jeep, with Shane alone.

One more time I remember the fish fry and think, this is all that's left. This is all that's left.

I look behind us. That cool car Glenn brought back glints in the light of dawn, and this glint is the last thing I see before the bumpy road takes my dad's truck too far away, and the survivor's camp is – as I predicted before, though under different circumstances – just another memory.

. . . . .

I'm hungry and I wish I ate more of that fish yesterday. There was no food left this morning, and everyone seemed surprised, as if no one had been keeping an eye on the supply, no one expected us to actually, truly run out of food. Even the squirrels my dad brought back had somehow disappeared, lost somewhere between him going after Merle and the fish fry and the burials (Dad was not happy when he heard about this loss). It feels like there's a mean creature in my stomach, a little monster trying to claw its way out because I won't give it its allowance. But I don't say anything to Dad about it. Nothing he can do right now. I just have to hang tight.

Before long, my mind turns to more serious things, things that more or less distract me from my empty belly. In my head, I go over several points, thinking and thinking about them – at school, we called this "brainstorming" – and finally, at least twenty minutes after we leave the camp, I feel like I've figured a thing or two out, and now I need to have a talk with my dad. So I break the silence.

"Killing Jim would kind of be like when you shot Buck, right?" I say, talking loudly, because both of our windows are down. "After he got hit by the car?"

Buck was my dog, a German shepherd Dad got me – strictly to stay at his place, Mom made that clear – when I was five. Last year he got ran over, and Dad knows animals and so he knew there was nothing anyone could to do to save him, and so he got his gun and put Buck down. Shot to the head, quick and painless.

Dad spits out the window when I ask this. "Buck wouldn'ta got up after he died and started tryin' to rip you apart."

"I know, but I mean . . ." I glance over at him, at my dad, separated from me by only a little space and his crossbow, riding in between us. "I just mean Jim's definitely gonna die, right?"

"What, you think I'd try to kill a healthy man?"

He snaps that. I hate it when he snaps at me. It makes me turn away now, sinking a bit in my seat. "I's just askin'."

There's a pause, then Dad is rolling his window up, and things get quieter inside the cab once he has. I hear him better when he talks again, and this time his voice isn't as sharp, either. "He's definitely gonna die."

I nod out my window, watching the dry ground in front of the shabby house we're passing. We speed by the place, but I have time to see that the front door's been left open. Or broken through.

I wanted to hear Dad say that, that Jim was surely dead, wanted to be completely positive that I understood where he was coming from, even though I already knew what was going to happen to Jim. He would definitely die, no matter what. Like Buck. And . . .

"Like Mom."

I don't know why I say this, because my dad and I don't really talk about my mom these days. But it slips out, this little thought that's been hanging around inside my head, growing and strengthening and irritating me like a splinter ever since I first saw Jim's bite and understood what it meant.

Dad doesn't say anything.

I roll up my own window before I turn to him again. His eyes are on the road. He has one arm on the wheel and one arm propped against the window, and the fingers of that arm are pressed against his lips. He's thinking.

I take a deep breath before I speak. "I got a question, but I'm afraid you'll get mad."

He glances at me, a tired glance, but not a mean one. "Good Lord, girl, you'd think all I ever do is yell at ya."

I smile, but I'm still worried.

"Gonna ask or what?"

I pop my fingers against my knee. He's not saying he won't get mad, but I knew better than to hope he would promise that, anyway. Guess I'll just have to take the risk. Beside, it ain't like he gets mad at me all that much. "Why didn't you . . ."

I can't make "kill" slip from my mouth, not this time.

"Why didn't you . . . put Mom down?"

And I don't like that, either, making Mom sound like an injured animal. It's out there now, though.

I know my dad really well, but even for me, he's hard to read sometimes. Now's one of those times. His eyes squint, maybe, just a little, but other than that his expression doesn't change. "'Cause she wanted to do it herself. You know that."

I do . . . And I think back to it, to that night, to the little pistol patiently waiting on my mom's kitchen table, the last companion she'd ever have. I flinch, but still make myself ask, "Jim doesn't want to do it himself?"

"Guess not." Dad rolls his window back down, just like that, and the wind attacks my face and hair, whipping it back and making it roll and twist and tangle, tangle, tangle. That harsh noise of air through a car window fills our little space, and even though I could still hear my dad and he could still hear me if we spoke loud enough, I know he's telling me he doesn't want to talk about it anymore. And that makes me kind of mad, if I'm being honest, because she was _my_ mom, he wasn't even married to her when she died, hadn't been for years, and if I'm okay with talking, shouldn't he be, too?

But that's not fair and I know it. I don't know why it's not fair, but that little voice inside of me that Mom always called _my conscience_ tells me so, and it won't leave me alone if I don't listen, I know that. I lean back in my seat, cross my arms, and go back to thinking about being hungry. It's the easiest thing to worry about right now.


	8. Options

I'm at the back end of the RV, standing by the Cherokee with Carl and Sophia, watching the smoke spiral away from the RV's front. I think it's making fun of us, that spiraling smoke. Making fun of us as we sit here, stranded in the sun, this stupid unrelenting sun that me and my burned face have gotten so sick of over these past few weeks.

Rick and Dale are talking by the smoke. I know Dale's lately been complaining about something, some sort of hose that the RV needs, and I think I hear him bring that up now. It must be the reason behind this badly-timed breakdown. My dad is near Rick, holding his crossbow, gazing around with those hunters' eyes we share. I gaze around, too. Our pack of cars is stopped in the middle of this long, straight road, empty of traffic in a way that I still can't quite get used to. Heat radiates off the asphalt and creeps into my jean legs, baking me. We're surrounded by a forest, and it looks so shaded and nice, and I very much want to run into it and find a cold patch of dirt to lie on. But of course I don't. I'd probably run into a walker within a minute, I know that.

"You three want to play cards?" comes Carol's voice. I turn, and she's standing by the Cherokee's back left door, holding up a new-looking deck. I'd bet that she was trying to scrounge up food, and the cards were the best she could find. My stomach growls. _What gives, Sydney?_ I imagine the little monster saying.

Sophia says sure and meets her mother halfway around the RV. She's carrying around that doll that Eliza gave her, clutching it to her stomach like it's the most precious thing in the world. I cross my empty arms, thinking some girls have dolls and some have knives.

There's no room in the back of the Cherokee to sit and play cards, so the only choice is to claim a patch of asphalt. Lori puts down a blanket for us, cool from being in the back of the car, and me and Carl and Sophia sit down. Maybe I shouldn't have, because I can't like Carl anymore, and I've never been close with Sophia, but I'm bored and hot and tired and hungry and this blanket feels really good. So, yes, I sit, and as I do I place both of my palms on the quilt, taking advantage of the cold before the sun-soaked asphalt chases it away.

A cross-legged Sophia carefully settles the doll beside her and then slides the deck from its box. Her hands fumble as she shuffles, making me doubt she plays cards much. "Go Fish?" she asks Carl and me.

Go Fish? I can't remember the last time I played Go Fish. I've always thought of it as a little kid's game. Carl's opening his mouth, but before he can speak and before I can think about it, I say, "How about poker?"

They both look at me in confusion.

I raise my eyebrows. "Five-card draw?"

They glance at each other. Carl shrugs. "I've never played."

I can't help but smile a little, and mentally I thank my dad and Merle for letting me sit in on all of those hands over the years. "I can teach you," I offer, brushing sticky hair off of my neck. "It's easy, and we don't have to –"

Then, from behind me: "Y'all – Jim –"

I twist around. Jacqui's just come out of the RV. Her back is to me, she's talking to the grownups up at the front. "It's bad. I don't think he can take anymore."

She goes back inside, and me, I stare at the empty space she left. I hear talking, I think from Shane, but I don't see him, and then it's Rick climbing up into the RV. I turn back around, my eyes on the blue and twisting pattern of the blanket. My finger traces along a twirl.

"Y'all keep your eyes open, now!" I hear Shane say, and he's talking just loud enough for us all to hear, but too quiet – hopefully – to draw the attention of any nearby walkers. "We'll be right back . . ."

Slamming doors, then a car starting up. Shane's jeep appears from the other side of the RV and drives ahead, tires rolling faster and faster, the jeep shrinking along the road. I think I see T-Dog riding passenger before they get too far ahead.

Carl frowns after the vehicle. "Where's Shane going?" he asks, turning his upper body (because we're all still sitting down, Carl and Sophia and me) to Lori. She and Carol remain standing against the Cherokee, and their faces wrinkle against the sun and their brows furrow in that worried grownup way that means they're thinking of something they don't want to share with us kids.

But Lori answers. "He must have seen a place down the road. Probably going to get something to fix the RV." When she smiles down at Carl, it doesn't seem like a real smile. It's too tight. Her mind's on what Jacqui said about Jim, I just know it, it has to be . . . mine is.

Lori nods at us. "Go ahead, play some cards."

Play some cards. Play some cards while Jim turns into a walker.

This is dumb. This is wrong.

"I don't want to play," I mutter, standing. I offer no further explanation. These kids, they wouldn't get it. I walk to the front of the Cherokee, my back to the others, and I lean against the hood's scorching metal, looking out into the woods and imagining I'm out there. I wait for the sounds of cards being dealt behind me, for the talking and high-pitched laughter that happens among friends, but nothing like that starts. The next thing I know, there are light footsteps behind me, and then Carl's by my side.

"You know, Jim might be alright," he says. "My dad thinks there's a cure. That's why we're going to the CDC."

I bite my tongue. I bite it hard. The woods. I'm in the woods.

"I bet he'll be fine, Sydney."

And I can't help it, I forget the woods. My tongue escapes, sore and mad. "No, he won't be." I face Carl, shaking my head. "And you need to grow up. People get bit and they die, and that's the end of it."

Carl's startled. He glances back at the others, the moms and Sophia. "Sydney –"

I really don't know what happens to me then. I just want him to shut up, shut up. So I take a step closer and then I'm screaming, _"That's the end of it!"_

Carl moves back, looking like I've bit him. Fine. I don't –

"Sydney!"

My dad. My fury drops away, replaced by something small and sorry. I nibble my lip, looking at him. He's coming over here, fast, crossbow pointed up, eyes on me. "What're you doin'? You tryin' to bring in every damn walker within a five-mile radius?" he hisses as he nears.

I can't help glancing at Carl again. He's still watching me like I might attack him at any minute. I didn't mean to –

Dad pauses in front of me, glaring, and I feel like he's taller than normal. His eyes dart to Carl, but they come back to me almost immediately, and he points. "I don't know what you two are discussin', but this ain't the time for squabbles. You know better."

His voice is low. He's warning me. I give a meek nod, and with a shake of his head, he turns and walks back.

He doesn't ask what's wrong. He doesn't ask _why_ I yelled.

And so I watch him go, feeling like a nothing, and the hot little pricks on the back of my eyeballs are the signal to _get out_. I duck my head and walk, fast, away from Carl, and I walk past the blanket Sophia's still on and I walk past Lori and Carol, and I don't look at them, any of them, I don't want to see their faces, their reactions to my outburst. My outburst. Jesus, I just acted like a little kid. Having a temper is one thing, but screaming like a baby is another.

I get to my dad's truck and crawl up into the passenger seat. I close the door. I ball up, my feet pressed on the dashboard, and stare at the windshield, pressing my lips together and blinking. A painful lump grows in my throat, and one quick sob rips from me. I clamp my hands over my mouth, stomp my foot once, and hold my breath until the lump dies. Then I grip my elbows, pulling them tight into my body, and I just sit there. Even with the windows open, it's hot, so hot, but I don't care. I'd rather be here, alone and burning up, then out there with them. With Carl. Who thinks that there's hope for walkers, that – what, that a walker bite is like a snake bite? Medicine makes it go away? Saves your life? Turns you back to normal?

No. No, no way, Jim _is_ going to die, there is no other option. Just like there was no other option for Mom.

Mom.

There can't be another option for Jim, there just _can't_ be. Because, if there is another option for him, that means there was another option for my mom, that means we could have saved her, she didn't have to die, didn't have to keep that pistol –

The lump is back. I curl up tighter, on my side, where I can bury my face in my hands, and I bite into my finger and think about being hungry until the threat of tears is gone, and Mom, Mom is back where she belongs, hidden away in my mind where her cheerful voice and sweet perfume and soft hands and tired headshakes and gentle backrubs are just words I can say out loud to describe her, not feelings and sights and smells that make my heart ache and my eyes water in a way I'm too old for.

. . . . .

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty. I sit here, sweating, hungry. Merle would say I'm pouting. That always made me so mad. I don't pout. I'm _not_ pouting, I'm hating myself, and it's better to do that alone.

I hear Shane's jeep roll in. I don't sit up. I don't look.

I hear lots of sounds from all over. Sophia and Carl end up playing cards without me, I know that, and their giggling suggests they have a great time with that kiddy game Go Fish. I don't care. Who needs them? Who the _hell_ needs them?

Grownups talk. Always in low voices. I catch my dad's tone once or twice but can't make out what he says.

Clanking sounds, distant but clear, tell me that Shane managed to find something for the RV and Dale's working on getting the thing up and running. So we'll be back on the road soon. I'll be alone in the car with my dad and he'll probably want to chew me out again, for acting like a four-year-old, for inviting walkers to come find us.

Whatever, I don't care. No walkers have shown up, have they? So it's not like my screaming was that big of a deal. Dad overreacted. He embarrassed me and was mean.

No. I was stupid and a brat. Like I said, a four-year-old.

Five more minutes, and finally I sit up straight, mainly because my back hurts, and it's then that I see the adults have all gathered just outside the RV door. I can't see them well from here, any of them, but I'm fairly sure they're all unhappy. They're talking. Rick wipes his forehead, head bowed. Carol's mouth moves. Rick's. Dale's. My dad, I think he just listens, so I know that whatever they're saying, he doesn't disagree with it.

Dale, he talks for a while. Lori speaks last, I think. Then Rick and Shane disappear into the RV.

My dad looks over at the truck, and I look down before he sees me watching.

I wait for a few seconds, until it feels safe to bring up my eyes again. When I do, Rick and Shane are coming out of the RV. They're not alone. They have Jim in between them, one of his arms around each of their necks, and he flinches deeper, differently, each time they take a step. I press my hand to my mouth, like Mom used to. Mom. Jim.

Rick and Shane carry-drag Jim along, like a dead deer. The rest of the group – now with Carl and Sophia, almost complete, missing only me – follows along slowly, solemnly. The giggling I heard before seems like something I must have imagined, or remembered from hours ago. There's a weight in my chest that I try to breathe away, but it doesn't work, the weight just stays, it _stays_.

Off the road they go, through the grass, up a small slope and to the edge of the woods. There, by a big tree, Rick and Shane lower Jim, and they prop him against the trunk, and his head falls back.

I think back to what I said to Carl, about how Jim wouldn't be fine. Why had I said that? Why did I want to fight about it? How would hoping that Jim couldn't be cured do anything for me? For my –

I hate myself. I hate myself so much –

I lose sight of Jim. The rest of the group, they block him out. I think Shane bends down to him and stands. Jacqui kneels and stands. Rick kneels and stands. Dale. And then, as suddenly as they went up the slope, they trickle back down it, these people in this group of ours. And my dad, my dad is the last to walk away. They're all coming back now, back to the vehicles. But Jim stays. They just leave him there, lying against that tree.

By this point, my arms are crossed on the windowsill, and I feel limp and numb as people reach their cars, going into their own space, be it the RV, the Cherokee . . . the truck. I don't look at Carl or Lori as they slide into the back of Carol's car, just a few yards from me. I don't look at Dad as he gets here, as he heads around to the driver's side. I can't take my eyes off of the small figure that is the man named Jim. The mechanic who was nice about my dad and let me watch him work on the RV.

Dad gets in, slams the door, settles the crossbow in beside him, and I find my voice and ask, "Leave him a gun?"

He turns the key. The engine wakes up, gurgling underneath me. "He didn't want one."

Something inside of me crumples and I don't even know why. This is just a bad day, I decide. And all I can think about as our caravan starts to go again, as Jim sits there and the rest of us move, is my mother.

My dad's smart and he knows me. I think that's why he doesn't mention me shouting earlier. I think that's why, when the truck is far enough down the road that I can't see Jim anymore and I lower back down in my seat, Dad reaches out and rubs my neck, the way he always does when he knows I'm hurting and he wants to tell me he's sorry, that he'd stop it if he could, that he loves me. It's good, it makes me not hate myself so much. But that weight in my chest, that still doesn't go away.

And we do it. We leave Jim to die.


	9. Nightmares

The rest of the drive to the CDC is long enough that I slip into sleep. Sort of. I'm still aware of the truck, aware of movement, slowing down and speeding up, taking a sharp turn, hitting bumps. But it's all like background noise, muffled by fuzzy black smoke inside of my ears. Behind my closed eyelids, things are there and clear and real.

I'm sitting back with Jim on the side of the road, and he's talking to me, telling me my dad's a survivor. Then he says he has to go dig more holes, and suddenly he and I are back at the field where we buried everybody, and he hands me a shovel and points at the ground, says to dig. I say no, everybody's already buried. He says to dig one for him. I drop the shovel, I say no, but he keeps pointing and so I look down again and a new hole's already there. It's already occupied. My mother's in the hole, just lying there, staring at me. The sleeve of her sweater – her favorite red sweater – has been torn away, baring her arm, baring the bite, so much redder than the missing fabric. "Your daddy'll take care of you, Sydney," she says. "I can't come with you. Your daddy'll take care of you." And I turn and Jim's not there anymore and I run, and I run down the hill and into the woods, and my dad's waiting for me, and I go to him, but then something's wrong, something's wrong, his skin is too white, it's peeling, and he starts walking towards me, and he's walking badly, and he's reaching out to me, mouth open, snarling –

I'm woken up when the truck stops.

The first thing I do is look over at my dad, and he's fine. He's not a walker. He will never, ever be a walker. I want to reach out and touch him, feel his warmth and his heartbeat, but as my hand starts to move his does, too, and it goes to his crossbow. It's then that I come to my senses and look out the windshield at our surroundings, narrowing my eyes against the minutes-from-being-night dark.

The truck is almost at the end of the parked line of our group's cars, in front of only Shane's jeep. We've stopped on the edge of a long, wide road in the middle of a city area. This road splits in two directions. One way, the way you'd take to drive on to somewhere, is blocked off by signs and black-and-white fence things up ahead. But we couldn't get through there if we tried – some sort of bundles are scattered all along the road, and all along _everywhere_ , actually, all across the _other_ direction the road takes, the direction stretching to a big, gleaming building with a long and tall wall of what looks like pure window, though in this light and this far away I can't see through all that glass. I think this building must be the CDC. We're here, then.

I reach for the door and my dad touches my arm. "Wait."

I do, but I don't know why. He leaves the truck with his crossbow, slamming the door behind him, and I see him take something out of the back – the shotgun. He wants both?

I'm hit with a very bad and scary feeling. I shake my head, forcing myself to completely wake up, wake up, and I turn back and look closer at the scene in front of me.

It's with this, this second look, that I understand that the black bundles are not black bundles. Of course they aren't. They are bodies, using the evening light and the dirt on my dad's windshield and my sleepy mind to disguise themselves as something less awful and bad. I feel like an idiot and then I feel cold, so cold, because there are a _lot_ of bodies. Something rises in my throat, I gulp it down, and the sigh I let out afterwards has a little gasping sound at the beginning of it.

My dad opens my door and makes me jump. He gestures for me to come out, and I raise my chin and do it. I've seen plenty of bodies. Plenty of dead people. I can't let them get to me now, I'm too tough. I don't scare easy.

The others are leaving their vehicles too, coming out slowly, the men all with their weapons ready to go. But I don't see any walking dead. Just really dead ones. I want to know what happened but don't ask. Not now.

We have to get to the CDC. So we have to go through all of it. All of the bodies.

My dad's hands are both full, one with the shotgun and the other with his crossbow. I hate that. I want his hand on my shoulder.

Shane comes around us, joining with the others, meeting with Rick and tossing a few words between them. Moving forward, Dad catches my eye. "You stay by me," he says, using his most serious _mind me_ voice. I nod.

The group gathers together, like water droplets into a puddle, and we head into it, the field of corpses. My dad walks on the outside and behind me. I try to stay as close as I can to him without getting hit by the gun swinging in his left arm. To our right is what seems to be a fort, a fort made out of – pillows? I can't tell. There's another one across the road. Bodies litter both. I don't understand.

Then the stench hits, and it hits hard and fast, like it was just waiting until we got too far in to turn back. Someone coughs, Jacqui makes a long "oh" sound. It wraps around us cruelly, and I can almost feel it try and strangle the air from me, and I gag and hide my mouth and nose underneath my shirt, but it helps only a little. Flies buzz around, louder than I thought flies could be.

And of course it's hot.

I don't want to get close to the corpses, but I don't have much of a choice. They're literally all over the place, all in various stages of rotting. And they're all walkers. Or, were. I think. I guess this after I find myself having to step directly over one's head and I realize that it's been shot in the temple. I make myself check all of the others I pass after that – except the ones that are really, really rotted, or ripped apart, or both – and yes, every one of them has a head injury. Huge bloodstains around their heads. No point in making sure they're all hit in the brain unless they were all walkers. That's good. Better walkers than people . . .

We walk down the street leading to the CDC. We pass a big yellow sign. A body is slumped on it, but around it I read: STOP. MILITARY CHECKPOINT.

That body lying against it is dressed all in camouflage. A soldier's uniform.

We pick up the pace when we get to what would be – if the CDC were a house, I mean – the front yard. The only bit of grass, oddly green and alive and wrong here, is just a patch in the middle of a roundabout road, one part of which goes up against huge, garage-door-like doors. Those doors, I think, are where Rick is leading us now. We're still only about halfway to them, though, from where we started at the cars. Oh, God. Still so much to go through.

There's a tank over to our left. I've never seen one in person before. I think of Tyler, how he would have loved to have seen it. But not like this, not like this.

Rick and Shane are both talking as we get farther and farther, dodging body after body. Their voices blend, overpowering and reinforcing, interrupting and continuing.

"Come on –"

"Keep moving – "

"Stay together – "

_"Shh –"_

Carl and Sophia have both walked with their mothers this entire time, and when I notice this, I feel the most powerful, terrible, uncontrollable surge of jealousy I have ever felt in my whole life. I crack my fingers, then my knuckles land against my teeth and I bite.

We're all moving faster now, the CDC growing before us, looking like a castle in a Disney movie. Hiding a princess. No. A mean and heartless, merciless king – or a dragon –

I take a step and feel something against my leg. Fingers. I jump and gasp, but my leg just brushed up against the hand of one of the corpses. The dead man's _dead_ , his head's half-gone. But my heart races, _pounds_ , and even though my dad told me to stay by him, I dart to Andrea and put my arm around her waist. Andrea and I have barely ever spoken, just little bits here and there, but she pulls me into her now, and my dad doesn't say anything about it.

"Keep it together," Rick or Shane mutters from up front. "Keep it together."

"We're almost there, baby, we're almost there," I hear Lori tell Carl.

And we are, we are, just a little farther – I press my hand and shirt harder against my face, looking up at the huge structure instead of the blood and gore below it. Then we're close enough that looking up at it hurts my neck, and then we're there, we're at the front – the entrance? It doesn't look like an entrance. Like I said, these are doors that look like they could have been on my mom's garage. Three of them. But whatever, whatever works, whatever gets us inside –

Rick, the gun bag slung over his shoulder and his sheriff's hat on his head, rattles one of the doors. It doesn't move.

"Nothin'?" Shane says as the group comes to a stop. I let go of Andrea and glance behind me, find my dad, and move back beside him. Since we're not walking anymore, I take a fistful of his shirt.

Shane leans against the door Rick's by, pressing himself into it. Rick looks around for something, a button? Shane pounds on the door. . .

Nothing happens. None of the doors open. _Nothing happens._

"There's nobody here," says T-Dog.

Rick turns to him, face hard. "Then why are these shutters down?"

I stare at the door. _Please open,_ I think. Then I try, _God, please open the door. Please._

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

"Walkers!"

My dad's voice. His shirt is wrenched from my hand as he moves away, and I see it, this walker in the gray, a monster coming steadily towards us like something I used to only have nightmares about. Someone shrieks and someone whines, and when Dad's close enough, he puts an arrow through the geek's head. It falls, but my dad doesn't go after the arrow, like he usually does. No, he turns, and he's furious. He's _furious_. He stomps past me. "You led us into a graveyard!"

"He made a call!" I hear Dale say as I spin around.

Dad's going to Rick. _"It was the wrong damn call!"_

Shane appears and gets in between Dad and Rick. He slams his hand into my dad's chest, shoving him back. "Shut up! You hear me? Shut up! _Shut up!"_

And my dad's close to me now, and so as Shane turns back to Rick and before my dad can do anything else, I move in front of him. I find his eyes, and I have no idea what I'm trying to say with this look I give him – _Don't fight, Dad_ or _I'm afraid, Dad_ or _I'm brave, Dad_ – but whatever it is, whatever my dad gets from it, he stays put. He looks me over for what feels like longer than it really can be, and his jaw clenches and unclenches, and he's scared, I can see it, the fear mixed with the fury, and even these days I _never_ see my dad scared, and then it's gone and he growls at the sky and whirls back around.

The doors still aren't open.

Shane tells Rick that this is a dead end.

"Where're we gonna go?" Carol wails.

"She's right," Lori says, talking fast, "We can't be here, this close to the city after dark –"

"Fort Benning, Rick, still an option," says Shane breathlessly.

The sun keeps sinking. It's more night than dusk now. I didn't use to mind the dark.

"On what?" Andrea steps forward. "No food, no fuel – that's a hundred miles."

"Hundred-twenty-five," Glenn corrects. "I checked the map."

The sound of shotguns behind me. My dad and T-Dog are keeping watch.

"Forget Fort Benning. We need answers _tonight_ – now!" insists Lori. Carl lets out a long moan and buries his head into her stomach.

I hear a walker, I think. I want my dad, I want to be wrapped in his arms where I'm safe, but he's holding a gun at the edge of this group, and so I want my mom, and I think about my nightmare, and I look at my dad again –

Rick's promising that we'll think of something. Glenn's begging, _let's go._ Squeaky words from Sophia. Cries from Carl, from Carol and Jacqui.

Shane's arm waves. Shane's brave, I know that, but right now he looks half-panicked. Still he says, "Alright, everybody back to the cars –"

My arm's grabbed, and I look up and it's Dad, he's with me again, and he has his crossbow slung over his back and his arm's free, and I'm mad at him for a split second – _Why didn't you do that earlier_ – but I forget it and grasp onto him, and we start to go, but then –

"The camera! It moved!"

Rick. We all turn. Camera? Rick's looking up, so I do, and yes, above the door, hiding in the shadows, is a little bump with a glare on it and it must be the camera he means. "You imagined it," says Dale.

Dad's stopped, and he's still, and I press into him, reaching up and holding onto the arm that's around me and wishing we could go, I just want to go . . .

Where?

No food, no fuel. A hundred-twenty-five miles.

Rick repeats it – the camera moved, he swears. Shane talks to him – it's dead, it's an automated device, now just come on – but Rick won't back down.

Shane says, "Man, just listen to me! Look around this place! It's dead, okay? It's dead!"

We're going to be dead, here in this dark, stinking, fly-infested patch of shutdown city. We're going to die –

I'm not watching anything anymore. I hold my dad to me. I hear banging, banging on the door again. Then Lori: "Rick, _there's nobody here!"_

"I know you're in there!" Rick's yelling. "I know you can hear me!"

Dad's hand is tense on my arm, not gentle, not comforting. More like he's ready to grab me and go at any second, and he is, I know. He's talking under his breath, saying words he'd kill me for saying. Shane yells for us all to get back to the cars, but Dad doesn't go, and neither do the others, not judging by what I hear. The kids cry, the women wail, and fast footsteps tell me they move around, but not away. Not without Rick. I find myself thinking that they've all become dependent on Rick, not Shane, not anymore, and even now they don't want to leave without Rick's say-so. And my dad doesn't want to leave the group. We're safer here, he said. But now? _Even now?_

Rick's begging the camera on the wall. "We have women, children, no food –"

I'm hungry, so hungry –

"Hardly any gas left –"

Scuffling behind me. Lori's fast, desperate muttering.

My dad rips his arm away from me. I stumble back in time to see him raise the shotgun. I look. There are more walkers now. _More_. Coming. All around. It's like we walked into a wasps' nest, woke 'em all up –

_"You're killing us!"_ screams Rick, and I've never heard a man scream like that. "You're killing us!"

"Come on, brother –" Shane cries.

"You're killing us!"

And then there's a _clang_ , and then bright light flows around us all and I stare straight into it, because it's coming from one of the doors.

That door, it's opened.


	10. Admission

The light dies away, leaving just an opening into a black, unknown place, but everyone here is ready to choose the unknown over what's out here, I think. And so we move, and we move fast. Rick goes in first. His gun is at the ready. Shane darts around us all, eyes moving from outside to inside as the group makes its way indoors, and he yells for my dad to cover the back. Meanwhile, my feet leave concrete for tile, and my nose brings in a breath that has just a hint of freshness to it, and so I inhale again, deeper, greedily. I stay at the end of the group, by Dad, who keeps his gun aimed outside as he backs in. We all go through a pair of glass doors, and then we're in this enormous, _electrically lit_ space that I would have wanted to yell in back before just to hear the echo. I don't now, but Rick does.

"Hello?" he calls as my dad and Dale close the glass doors behind us, and yes, there is an echo, but it's more creepy than it is cool.

I crane my head up and around. I went on a field trip to a museum once, and this is like that. The ceiling is impossibly high and the wall that supports it is, as I noticed outside, mostly window. The floor tile is patterned with big, funny shapes, and in front of us, built into the wall, is a giant blue sign. It's decorated like a map. "CDC" is in the middle of it, written in blaring white letters.

I swipe sweat from my forehead and cough, either because my lungs are readjusting to clean air or because my throat is dry from all that happened outside. I listen to the sounds of shuffling feet and guns being fiddled with. Everyone is looking this way and that, no one seems to know what to do. My dad still keeps his shotgun up and pointed behind us, even with the glass doors shut, and I realize that those doors won't do too much for too long if enough walkers get to them. And I can see the walkers moving in. We're going to have to close the bigger outside doors, the ones that should be on a garage. But how, I don't know _how_ . . .

"Hello?" Rick tries again, and this time he's answered by the clear sound of a gun being cocked. He and Glenn jerk their own weapons up and aim in the direction the noise came from, which is up ahead, in an unlit corridor. I can see the shape of a man there, standing by a set of stairs.

"Anybody infected?" the man yells.

Rick's gun lowers, just a little. "One of our group was. He didn't make it."

Jim. His name was Jim.

The man comes forward, a little more into the light. He's tall and blonde and still pointing that big rifle at Rick. He doesn't really look mean, though. Scared, maybe? "Why are you here? What do you want?"

". . . A chance."

He keeps moving forward, the strange man, closer and closer to us. But like I said, he doesn't look mean in the face. His eyes are narrowed, studying Rick. "That's asking an awful lot these days."

"I know."

I want to turn to my dad but don't. As the man takes a few more steps to us, his eyes running over our group, I square my feet and look at his face, waiting for his gaze to cross mine. It does and I hold it.

A few more seconds pass. Breathing is the only sound.

Finally, "You all submit to a blood test," the man says. "That's the price of admission."

"We can do that," agrees Rick.

This is when the stranger finally lowers the rifle. "You got stuff to bring in, you do it now. Once this door closes, it stays closed."

The door's going to close. He's going to close the door. Something inside of me relaxes.

My dad and Rick and Shane and Glenn go outside to get the bags from the vehicles, and it makes me nervous, but they're armed, and they run fast and get back soon. T-Dog and Dale close the glass doors once the four are inside again. Bags are handed out. I tug mine, Mom's favorite travelling duffel, from Dad's arm.

"Don't want me to carry that?" he asks.

"Nah."

The strange man's by the wall. He presses what looks like a blown-up version of the keypad to the home security system my Nana and Papaw had. This keypad glows green, and the man talks to it. "Vi, seal the main entrance. Kill the power up here."

Who's Vi?

I watch through the glass as the outside door hisses down and bangs closed, blocking out the walkers, blocking out everything. A loud noise, and then it gets dark, except for a few little lights along the CDC sign.

"Rick Grimes," I hear Rick say.

Dr. Edwin Jenner. That's how the man introduces himself.

We follow the doctor down the corridor he came from, and he stops by a set of elevator doors. I like elevators, and this one is really big – we all fit into it, though it's a little tight. Dad steps into a corner and I lean against him, maneuvering around the crossbow to do so.

The elevator starts to move and my stomach feels like it's floating. I can't tell if we're going down or up, though. After a minute, my dad asks, "Doctors always go around packin' heat like that?"

He means the rifle Dr. Jenner still has in his arms. "Well, there were plenty left lying around. I familiarized myself." The doctor is at the front of the elevator and has to turn to say this to Dad, and he doesn't un-turn after. No, he looks over the group again, and at first I think he might still be worried that one of us is infected, bitten, but all he ends up saying is, "But you all look harmless enough."

I glance at my dad, who's never looked harmless, as far back as I can remember. And half of us in here have guns. I have my knife. But, like Rick said outside, we have women and children. And we all look tired. We all are tired. And hungry.

Dr. Jenner's watching Carl now. "Except you. I'll have to keep my eye on you."

He's joking. Carl smiles, liking the attention. You'd think between his mom and dad and Shane he'd get enough. I don't say anything, I just let my eyes rest until the elevator clatters to a stop.

We file out into a hallway that reminds me of the ones we had back at school, only without the posters and decorations. It's all white, too, so really I guess it's more like a hospital. I think back to the hospital I visited once when my mom's old boyfriend Shawn got into a car wreck, and yes, this is definitely more like a hospital, and I don't really like it, but at least it's cool down here. I'm not sweating so much. And clean air, clean air.

We pass door after door, and Carol asks, "Are we underground?"

Underground? Like a basement? There are no windows. I guess the elevator was carrying us down, then.

Dr. Jenner looks back at her. "You claustrophobic?"

I don't know what that means. Scared of basements, maybe.

"A little," Carol replies.

"Try not to think about it."

_Try not to think about it._ I know that's not possible, because Mom used to play a game with me – "Try not to think about unicorns, Sydney," she'd say, or something like it, and then I would try and try but the more I tried not to think about unicorns I _had_ to think about unicorns . . .

Farther and farther down the hall we go, and then we cross through an opening into yet another big room. Dr. Jenner actually _calls_ it "the big room" – he tells that person Vi to turn on the lights in here, in the big room, and there's a zapping-bumping sound like you would expect only in movies, and white lights fill the place up. We're standing on a bridge-like thing – though the real floor is only a few feet below us – that leads to a railed and raised circle of very big, very fancy computers.

"Welcome to Zone 5," Dr. Jenner says. He starts to walk down the bridge, to the center of the room and all the computers. Rick follows him, and we all follow Rick.

"Where is everybody?" Rick asks as he walks. "The other doctors, the staff?"

Dr. Jenner turns. He's made it to the middle of the space, and he looks small there. "I'm it. It's just me here."

The bridge has rails on the side of it, too. I reach out and hold one now as the group pauses. I don't know what it means, exactly, that Dr. Jenner's the only one here, but I doubt it can be good. And the emptiness of this place is – Mrs. Gladson, wonderful Mrs. Gladson would say – _eerie_.

"What about the person you were speaking with?" Lori asks. "Vi?"

"Vi!" calls Dr. Jenner. "Say hello to our guests . . . Tell them 'welcome.'"

_"Hello, guests,"_ comes a voice from everywhere. It's in the walls, talking through invisible speakers, and it sounds like a woman, but like a computer, too. _"Welcome."_

Vi isn't real. Or at least, she's not human. She's not a person we can talk to who can help us or who could have cured Jim or Mom or anyone.

Dr. Jenner stares at Rick. There's a dull note in his voice when he says, "I'm all that's left. I'm sorry."

. . . . .

I don't like shots. I hate shots. And giving Dr. Jenner my blood isn't even a _shot_ – where at least I get healthy stuff poked into my body – it's just him sucking something I need out of me. But I have to do it, it's the price of admission, and apparently we want to be here. So I give the doctor my arm. I let him jab me without flinching, and my dad smiles at me after.

He and I are the first two to get blood taken, Dad and I. When he's done with it, we settle in by the wall. Us and the group, we're in what looks like a classroom – there's a whiteboard at the front and everything, although there are no desks, just the chairs that would be tucked underneath the desks if there were any here.

There's a little metal table by the door, though. Dad lifts me up and sets me there, then comes around and leans forward on it. Our heads are almost level. "You good, Little Bit?"

"Yeah," I whisper as Carol and Sophia go up to give their blood, holding hands. "What's 'claustrophobic' mean?"

I think he chuckles but I'm not sure what for. "Means you don't like being in small places. Or places with no windows."

"Okay." I pause. Rick and Lori are sitting on the floor to my left, so I lower my voice even more. "It's bad that Dr. Jenner's the only one here, isn't it?"

Dad's jaw works. I think he wants to spit. He keeps his eyes ahead. "Don't worry 'bout it."

That's not a real answer. And I _am_ worried, and it's the worst kind of worry, because I don't even know _why_ I'm worried. "I'm just tryin' to figure out what's gonna happen now." This has all gone on so fast. I went from fearing Dr. Jenner – he _did_ have a gun on us – to letting him hold my arm and stab me with a needle, all in just a few minutes, and inside of me, a part of my heart wants to loosen up and another part is nervous and jumpy, not liking this change of pace, not liking this unknown environment.

"I said don't worry 'bout it." My dad looks at me, then bumps his shoulder into mine. He's playing. That's a good sign. But I'm mad that he won't give a real answer, so I don't bump him back, I just glare. He sees this and sighs. "We're gonna stay here, Syd."

I look at my feet as Glenn leaves one of the missing-a-desk chairs to get his blood drawn. It must be safe here, then, if my dad isn't going to try to get us to leave. I need to make myself relax, relax all the way. But . . .

"You were right," I murmur at the floor. I have to say it.

"'Bout what?"

I resist biting my knuckle. I make myself talk. "Just . . . I know you didn't think there would be a cure. For walkers. And there's not. I mean, if there was, Dr. Jenner wouldn't be taking our blood, and a lot of other people would probably still be here." I shrug. "You were right."

I know he's watching me, I can see it from the corner of my eye, and then after a long second he says "C'mere," and he pulls me in tight and kisses my head. "You think too much, baby girl."

He's teasing, I know. And he's warm. And when I press my ear to his chest, I hear his heartbeat, and that makes me feel a little more calm, though not as calm as I would like to be.

They all go up, the whole rest of the group. Andrea and Jacqui are last. Jacqui's first. No problems. Then it's Andrea's turn, and when she's finished, she stands up unsteadily.

"You okay?" Dr. Jenner asks, and I have to admit, it certainly seems like Dr. Jenner's nice, overall.

"She hasn't eaten in days," Jacqui answers, helping Andrea along. "None of us have."

Not _days_ , but still. A while.

Something changes in Dr. Jenner's expression after Jacqui tells him this, and something about the way it changes gives me a sudden and unexplainable buzz of hope in my empty, empty stomach.


	11. I Wasn't Whinin'

Dad gives me a taste of his wine. He's let me sip beer before and it was awful, but I still want to try the wine – it's what all the grownups are having right now, after all – and I figure it's surely way different from beer. And I'm right, it is, but it's pretty much just as bad. I know it's wrong to lie, but I go ahead and lie anyway, saying I like it. That sends laughter around the table and Dale slaps my dad on the back. "Good luck with that one."

Dad just shakes his head and takes the bottle back from me, and he's trying not to smile but not doing a very good job.

After watching this, Carl wants to try some wine, too. Lori doesn't like the idea of it, but Rick asks what it would hurt, and so Lori gives in. Carl tries the stuff and gags. Everyone laughs again, but differently this time, and even though I was lying about liking the wine I go ahead and let myself feel extra grown-up. Guess I can hold my liquor.

All of this? It takes place inside the cafeteria. The CDC's, I mean. I thought only schools had cafeterias, but no, there's one in this building – this building that just keeps on throwing out surprises – and it's what Dr. Jenner called "fully stocked." In other words, there's lots and lots of food of lots and lots of different types, and where my school's cafeteria had weird and sometimes gross meals, what's on my plate now is better than half the stuff I ate before the walkers – and my mom was a really good cook. That little monster that's been so mean inside of my stomach finally, finally shuts up, satisfied by juicy chicken and peas.

The group, we're all gathered around a table in the single lit corner of the cafeteria, and because the rest of the space is so dark, it feels like we're all just in a small room. It's nice, like the family dinner scenes you see on TV, and it almost reminds me of the fish fry – but no, that makes me nervous, can't think about that. This is different, because my dad's here, and we're all underground behind rock-solid walls. The walkers can't get at us.

I think I'm starting to get closer to relaxing all the way.

Talking and smiles. Shane's telling Carl to stick to soda, my dad's telling Glenn to keep drinking. My dad's drinking a lot himself, but that's okay. He holds his liquor pretty well, too, that's probably where I get it from, and anyway, even if he does end up drinking too much, he's never been what Mom called "a mean drunk." That's what that old boyfriend Shawn was, I think.

At one point, Rick rises and thanks Dr. Jenner for letting us stay here. And for the food. My dad says, "Booyah!" and me and some others repeat it. Dr. Jenner smiles just a little and raises his wine glass in thanks.

That's when things take a downhill turn. After going so well, for such a small bit of time.

It's Shane who does it. "So when are you gonna tell us what the hell happened here, Doc?" he asks, and everyone goes quiet. Shane, he doesn't seem to notice, or doesn't care. He plays with his glass. "All the, uh – the other doctors that were supposed to be figurin' out what happened. Where are they?"

"We're celebratin', Shane," Rick says, eyeing him. "No need to do this now."

"Whoa, wait a second. This is why we're here, right?" Shane looks hard back at Rick, who's sitting across the table from him with Carl and Lori – and it's funny, because not long ago it was always Shane sitting with Carl and Lori – and Shane has that same look in his eyes that Merle used to get when he would argue with my dad about something. It's a challenge. He folds his hands and tells Rick, "This was _your_ move. Supposed to find all the answers. Instead we, uh . . ." He snorts and jabs his thumb over at Dr. Jenner. "We found _him_. Found one man. Why?"

The _why_ is directed at Dr. Jenner, who hardly pauses before answering, and he talks right back at Shane in a way I somehow admire. "Well, when things got bad, a lot of people just . . . left. Went off to be with their families."

Dale's sitting to my left, and he nods understandingly as Dr. Jenner explains this, and I do the same, because I understand, too. My parents stopped going to work when things got bad. And I stopped going to school, which Mom always called my job. But Dr. Jenner's not done.

"And when things got worse," he says, "When the military cordon got overrun, the rest bolted."

"Every last one?" Shane leans back in his chair. I don't think he believes the doctor.

"No," Dr. Jenner says pointedly. He's tense now. Or, even tenser than before, he hasn't really unwound since he first let us in, I guess. "Many couldn't face walking out the door. They . . . opted out."

And my mouth goes dry. The meat I've chewed up is very hard to swallow. I have to take a gulp of water to help me.

"There was a rash of suicides."

I put my water cup down quickly, because my hands have started to shake a bit, because I hate the word _suicide_ , the word I've heard more than once in whispered conversations and in my head both before and after my mom –

"That was a bad time," finishes Jenner, looking down now.

"You didn't leave," says Andrea. "Why?"

"I just kept working . . . hoping to do some good."

_But you didn't,_ I think. I push around the remaining peas on my plate. My mouth never really gets its wetness back.

. . . . .

This building is the kind of building that seems to have an endless amount of rooms. Like Hogwarts. After dinner, Dr. Jenner leads us down to a section of the place that isn't quite so hospital-like. Here, the halls are narrower and the walls are yellow and tan. There's carpet beneath our shoes. Carl, Sophia, and I lead the group (behind only the doctor) down this hallway as he explains, "Most of the facility is powered down, including housing, so you'll have to make do here."

I glance through one of the open doors and see a bedroom-sized space with a couch against the wall. I wonder what these rooms used to be for.

"The couches are comfortable," says Dr. Jenner. "But there are cots in storage if you like . . ." He stops, turns, and looks at us three in front. The youngest. "There's a rec room down the hall that you kids might enjoy," he says, bending down to our eye-level. "Just don't plug in the video games, okay? Or anything that draws power."

We nod dutifully, even me, though I know I won't go down there.

Jenner stands up straight and addresses everyone when he says to go easy on the hot water if we shower.

That's right. _Hot water._ I perk up, just a little.

The group breaks apart, and Dad picks out a room for him and me, and the room has its own bathroom, and Dad tells me I can have it first while he goes to find a cot. I bound in and go straight to the shower, turning on the water just to hear the sound, to feel the steam on me while I undress.

I know Dr. Jenner said to take it easy, and I really do try to, but the warmth of the water feels so good and familiar and strange all at once that I keep edging the knob a little closer to the _H_ side. My skin turns really red, my sunburnt face sears a little, but I don't care. I let my hand overrun with shampoo and I scrub my hair, ridding it of all the grease it's built up over the past few days, and there's even _conditioner_ in here. I haven't had conditioner in I don't know how long. I spread it all over my hair and smooth every one of my tangles out, and my hair mats down my back and it's soft, it's so soft. Like silk, just like my mom's was –

And my happy heart sinks, because lately it's been hard to think about Mom without my heart sinking. And I think about her a lot.

I shut off the water – the shower has now lost its mood-lifting power – and climb out, distractedly being careful with walking on the steamy tile. I brought my bag in here, and I search through it now to get my pajamas. My hand touches the smooth surface of what I know is my single picture of my mom and me, framed, snapped at my seventh birthday party. I don't grab it, I don't look at it. I just find my clothes and yank them out. I put them on and then brush my teeth and leave the bathroom.

My dad's found a cot. He's put it in the middle of our little room. He got blankets and pillows, too – he has one of each, and there are their twins, tossed onto the couch and waiting for me. Dad's rifling through his bag on the cot when I come out. He pauses and looks me over, taking a swig from his wine bottle as he does. "Didn't recognize you for a second."

I smile weakly. Dad puts the bottle down by the head of the cot. He pulls up the bag and carries it past me, to the bathroom, where he drops it in before turning back around and leaning on the doorframe. "You goin' to that rec room?"

A knot comes together in my stomach as Carl's and Sophia's faces join my mother's in my mind. And then, when all of them are together like that, Jim's suddenly invited to the party, and the knot tightens and twists.

Me, I shake my head.

"Why not?"

Because I'm too busy thinking about suicides to go play. Because Carl and Sophia will be down there, and we're not friends, and I doubt they even like me at all, after today . . . today, when Jim died and Jenner talked about people _opting out . . ._

I don't say that, though, not any of it, of course not. I just shrug. "I'm tired." Which isn't a lie. But Dad keeps looking at me like he's trying to figure something out, and it bugs me when he does that. I can tell he's a little drunk, but not bad, not bad enough to not give me that look, at least.

Before long he says, "What were you and the Grimes kid arguin' about today?"

And then I think back to it, to that little event before we left Jim – left him for dead – back to my dad getting on to me in front of Carl and everybody after I went off on that kid for not shutting up about Jim and a cure. Now, anger spreads out in my gut like a too-hot drink. It makes my arms cross. "Thought you didn't care?"

"I never said that and you know it."

"You called it a squabble," I remind him. "You didn't even ask what it was about."

"Well, I'm askin' now, ain't I? You gonna tell me or you wanna keep whinin' about it?"

"I ain't whinin'!" I snap.

"You'd best mind that tone."

And now I'm _mad_ at him and I'm _mad_ at Carl and I still have Mom and what Dr. Jenner said bouncing around in my brain and it's all just coming together in my chest, and so I look straight up at my dad and the knot inside of me rips apart and I shout, "Well, I _wasn't whinin'!"_

Then it's quiet. I feel a wave of shock cross over my body. My dad, he has on a face so scary that I have to look at the ground, and after a long moment he says, "Talk to me like that again, I'ma put you over my knee."

He means it, I know, so I swallow and nod. I shouldn't have yelled like that and I know it, I just . . .

He crouches down in front of me. "Now, you wanna tell me what the hell's got into you?"

I twist my head away more, pretty much looking over my shoulder. I can't. I can't talk, I'll start crying.

And so Dad snorts and stands. "Fine. One less thing for me to worry 'bout."

He's slammed the bathroom door before the full sting of those words can really sink in.

. . . . .

I leave the room. I don't know where I'm going, I just know that I can't stay in there.

I gnaw at my knuckle as I pad down the hall. I've learned that if I bite hard enough, I can hold back tears for a little while, and I need to find a safe place before I cry. And I'm _going_ to cry, I can't stop it this time, not completely, there's too much inside of me and I can't keep it all in. Guess I'm not strong enough.

How did we get to this, my dad and me? Barely two hours ago he was hugging me and calling me Little Bit, telling me I think too much when really he knows I know he's proud of how smart I am and bumping me with his shoulder and letting me try wine . . .

Now he's _mad_ at me and I was _mad_ at him but now I'm just sorry because I don't _want_ him to be mad at me.

I go the opposite direction of the rec room, backtracking the way Dr. Jenner brought us in before. I pass one room where I hear what sounds like vomiting, I pass another where I can hear someone singing, but I don't stop for either, for anything, I just pick up my pace, hoping I don't run into anyone. And I don't. I don't, thank God.

At the end of the hall, there's a left turn, and then there's an up-going staircase in between two elevators, and I sit on the foot of that staircase and draw my knees into me, tight, making myself as small as I can before finally letting the tears loose, letting myself go, letting the torn-apart knot bleed itself dry of all of the mean and bad things it held together in my belly. The sobs, I try to keep those quiet. I don't want anyone to hear. I don't want anyone to come see what's happening and find pathetic me. The girl who can't seem to be good anymore. The little brat who just makes things hard because she's not as tough as she needs to be, and I told Carl to grow up today, but I need to grow up, too, and I hate myself again . . .

Five minutes go by, and I just keep crying, keep thinking bad things about me, and I think about my mom and my dad and Merle and Jim and Dr. Jenner and the other kids and _everyone_ , and it's when those five minutes are up that I hear, "Sydney?"

And it's Carl. Of course it's Carl.

He's standing at the turn, looking at me with wide eyes, and now he's asking, "What's wrong? Are you okay?" A stupid question.

I reach up and swipe away tears, but that doesn't help much, since new ones are still coming out. I gulp and manage to squeeze "Go away" out of my throat.

He doesn't. No, he steps forward, and then I'm _so_ mad – I'm _pissed off_ – but I can't yell, not again, not three times in one day, and not now. Why is he even here?

He asks, "Why do you do that?"

I press my fists into my eyes. "Do what?"

"Why do you . . . get mad whenever I try to be nice? I just want to help."

I grit my teeth. I tell myself to stop crying, to get over it, be tough, and I tell _Carl_ , "Because I don't need your help. I can take care of myself." My head's in my hands when I say this. I stare at my socks. I can't look at Carl. I just can't and I don't want to.

There's only my choking, gotta-stop-the-sobbing sounds for a while, and I think Carl's left, but then, "Look . . . Sophia and me are down in the rec room. It's really cool. They've got lots of stuff. Books, and games . . . You should come."

I stare at my socks some more, blurry white blobs. I give a long, slow headshake that sends fresh and hot tears down my face.

So he walks away. He's done all he can, I guess. And I know it's what I wanted, for him to leave, but something in me aches a new kind of ache anyway when I realize I'm alone again.

. . . . .

Dad's still in the shower when I get back to the room. Good. I wrap myself in the blanket on the couch, burying my puffy face into it. Minutes pass. When Dad comes out, I pretend to be asleep. I hear him come over to me and I keep on pretending, my face to the back of the couch and mostly sunk into the blanket.

He huffs out a breath, and then the cover is being pulled up over more of my back and shoulders. Dad's hand brushes over the piece of blanket covering my arm before he moves away and the lights turn off and I hear him lie down on his cot.

It takes me what feels like an hour to fall asleep. And with all that's happening in my head, that hour is not fun at all.

I really want my mom.


	12. Brains, Bullets, and Texas Hold'em

Dad wakes me up a little later than usual the next morning. I get dressed and brush my teeth and then we walk up to the cafeteria for breakfast. He talks once or twice and I answer. I'm respectful, but I'm not very friendly. Neither is he, though. Those times he talked, he was short about it. He's a little hungover, and I know, I know he's still mad at me.

Everyone else is already in the cafeteria. Glenn's hungover really bad. T-Dog's dishing eggs out of a skillet. Carl's sitting with his parents, and naturally I avoid his eyes, and I grab one of those mini-boxes of Cheerios and a carton of milk and sit as far away from him as I can. That's all the way at the end of the table, by Andrea. My dad sits on my other side.

But breakfast doesn't last long, because someone's already hounded Dr. Jenner for what the CDC found out about the walkers, about everything. And so the next thing I know, he leads us back to that computer room, that big one with the bridge and the loud lights.

He walks up to one of the computers – don't know why this one, it doesn't look special, and says, "Give me playback of TS-19."

_"Playback of TS-19,"_ Vi repeats. And bam, a screen lights up on the wall in front of us, as huge as one at a movie theater, but with very computer-like stuff on it. Like, right now, it says "Loading Data Set" on the right half and on the left are what look like blue-colored pictures of the brain in my old science book. There's beeping, too, like a robot, which is all computers really are.

Dr. Jenner faces us. We all draw in around him, and my eyes switch between him and the computer screen as he says, "Few people ever got the chance to see this . . . Very few."

The "Loading Data Set" goes away, replaced by a gigantic picture of a brain. Well, a brain inside of a human head, a human head that seems to be facing us. I think it's sort of like an X-ray, since we can't see the skin or the face, just the stuff inside.

"Is that a _brain?"_ Carl asks.

I start to bark out "Yes," try to redeem myself in Carl's eyes – smarty-pants is better than crybaby, right? – but I stop myself, because I don't need to redeem myself, not with Carl. He doesn't matter.

So Dr. Jenner answers him. "An extraordinary one." He looks slowly back at the screen, his face odd and distant. "Not that it matters in the end . . . Take us in for the EIV."

_"Enhanced Internal View,"_ says Vi. The brains on the left of the screen get shoved over, and the main brain turns. It's like the person it's inside of is lying down now. The picture's bigger, too. Then the camera – the camera? – starts to zoom in, until we're deep inside the brain, and everything is a really bright blue, but there are lights that are a special almost-white kind of blue that dart around everywhere, all along the hundreds of what look like strings and tangles that I guess make up brains. It's strangely pretty. I touch my head.

"What are those lights?" asks Shane.

Jenner begins to pace, gesturing as he talks. He reminds me of Mrs. Gladson when he does this. "It's a person's life. Experiences, memories . . . It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, in all those _ripples of light,_ is you. The thing that makes you unique. And human."

"You don't make sense, ever?" My dad says from my left, a little farther off than I usually keep him. Me, I stare hard at the image of the brain, at these ripples of light. Unique means one of a kind. So, we all have these lights . . . but they make us all different?

"Those are synapses," Dr. Jenner explains, still pacing, lecturing away. "Electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does, or thinks from the moment of birth . . . to the moment of death."

The word _death_ gives me the slightest chill.

"Death?" echoes Rick, coming forward. "That's what this is? A vigil?"

I don't know what that is. But Jenner says yes. "Or rather, the playback of the vigil."

"This person died?" Andrea whispers, slowly stepping closer to the screen, and my stomach drops, the chill comes back stronger, all down my back and along my ribs. "Who?"

"Test Subject 19. Someone who was bitten, infected . . . and volunteered to have us record the process."

I look back in horror at the screen, at the flashing blue lights. They don't seem as bright, as fascinating, as pretty anymore . . . this is a _vigil_. This is watching someone die.

I'm behind my dad – I hung close to the mouth of the little bridge, so I'm behind most everyone – but the corner of my eye catches him glancing back at me, just checking, I think, like he does sometimes. I don't return the look. I join my hands in front of me and keep my eyes on the big blue brain as Dr. Jenner orders, "Vi, scan forward to the first event."

_"Scanning to first event."_

"SCANNING FORWARD . . ." the screen reads, and there's one of those loading bars filling up fast underneath the words. Then there's just the brain again, only now something's wrong. We're zoomed back out, so we see the whole thing, and at the place where the head meets the neck, there's what looks like a black, moving tree sprouting up and weaving its branches throughout the brain. I rub the back of my neck, flinching, and I swear I can feel something in there now.

"What is that?" asks Glenn.

"It invades the brain like meningitis," says Dr. Jenner, and I know "meningitis," it's a really bad kind of sickness. I also know that when the doctor says "it" he means it. The walker disease. I don't get the next thing Dr. Jenner says, something about glands . . . hemorrhaging? . . . but the thing after that is very clear: "The brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs."

Even as he speaks, the tree inside of the person's head keeps spreading and spreading, until it's all over the brain, oh, the brain's totally black, and the person is twitching, thrashing –

And now Test Subject 19 isn't moving at all.

"Then death," says Dr. Jenner quietly.

My hand flies to my mouth, but I don't chew on my finger, like I originally planned, instead I just cover my lips with my palm, watching my feet now.

"Everything you were or ever will be . . . gone."

What about heaven? When Mom and I went to church –

_Don't think about Mom!_

"Is that what happened to Jim?" I hear Sophia ask, and oh, I hate her in this moment. Carol says yes.

Andrea's crying. Dr. Jenner sees. Lori explains about Amy. Says Andrea lost her two days ago . . . only two days? Really?

How long has it been since Mom?

Oh, God. I can't remember.

"I lost somebody, too," Dr. Jenner tells Andrea. "I know how devastating it is."

Andrea doesn't say anything back.

And Mom, her face is still in my head, grinning, green eyes wrinkling on the edges – I want Dad – no, no, I'm mad at him. Or, he's mad at me, right? Oh, I need to get out of here –

_No._ No, gotta be tough. Gotta be tough.

"Scan to the second event," Jenner says.

_"Scanning to second event."_

The scanning screen, then the brain, still all dark. "The resurrection times vary wildly. We had reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours. In the case of this patient, it was two hours . . . one minute . . . seven seconds."

The sick feeling in my belly warns me that I'm not going to like this.

Little sparks of red, dark red – blood red – appear inside the blackened brain. Just at a small part, though, where the roots of the tree were back when the black was just that, a tree, not the whole brain.

"It restarts the brain?" says Lori disbelievingly.

Jenner says no, just something called the brain stem. "Basically, it gets them up and moving."

And eating.

"But . . . They're not alive?" says Rick.

Jenner looks at him and waves at the screen. "You tell me."

Rick gives a little headshake. "It's nothing like before. Most of that brain is dark."

"Dark. Lifeless. Dead. The frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part – that doesn't come back. The you part. Just a . . . shell. Driven by mindless instinct."

Then, the head holding the brain starts moving again. Its teeth start clashing together, viciously, like –

Like a walker's.

Something juts into the upper screen, just a little, and my eyes are just going to it when there's a flash of light, and then the brain has a long, jagged line ripped through it. And the subject stops moving.

"God. What was that?" asks Carol, but I don't hear any answer. I've already turned by that point, my hand still clamped over my mouth, and I mean to just walk down the bridge and out of the computer room but somehow I end up running.

So that's what it looks like. When a bullet pierces through your skull, I mean. Only my mom? My mom wasn't already dead. Her brain wasn't already dark. It was _alive_ , pulsing with lights, and yes, there was one of those trees growing in it, but it wasn't all dark yet, she was there, she was _her_ , and the bullet –

I hear my dad calling after me as I'm running down the hall, the white hospital hall. I don't stop at first, but then he calls again, louder, and so I stop, I have to, because I can't handle him getting even madder at me. I stand there, hands at my sides, head slumped and hair covering my face, focusing on breathing easy, and then Dad comes around in front of me. We're far enough down the hall that I can't hear the others anymore.

"Look at me."

That's not his special gentle voice, but it's not his scary one, either. Not like the one from last night. I gaze up at him. The first tear slides from my right eye as I do.

Dad stares back at me for a long time. Then, "This is about your mom, isn't it?" He nods back at the computer room. "Takin' off like that, actin' out yesterday. It's because of her, right?"

I gulp, I sob, I nod.

"C'mere." And now he is using his special gentle voice.

He crouches down and holds me, calls me baby girl, and I wrap my arms around him and bury my face into his neck. Then – even though I'm too big, but oh well, I don't care right now – he picks me up and carries me all the way back to our room.

. . . . .

Everything comes bubbling out.

Sitting on the couch with Dad, a blanket over me, I spill everything out to him, and it hurts and feels good all at the same time, and he's good about listening, my dad, when you catch him at the right time, or when he knows you really need it. At least for me.

I tell him why I yelled at Carl, how he was talking about Jim and how there would probably be a cure, and how I didn't _want_ there to be – even though I knew that was so bad – because if there was a cure that would mean we could have saved Mom, somehow. And when Dr. Jenner talked about the suicides last night, and then showed the brain getting shot just a few minutes ago, all I could think about was that _that was what happened to Mom,_ and –

Dad stops me at that part, probably because I'm crying really hard again and he might not be able to fully hear me. He holds me in his arms for a while, and that helps. That helps a lot.

"Shh, shh, you're alright . . . Shh, that's enough, now, Syd . . . C'mon, dry up, be my tough girl . . ."

That's one thing about my dad – he's good about not being mean about it when I can't help but cry, but he doesn't let me cry for very long. So I make myself swallow again and again, and I press my teeth together, and I push my hands into my eyes, and finally the sobs stop and I just sit there on the couch, my head against Dad's chest, his hand moving in circles on my back.

After a while he says, "Sweetheart, I know you miss your mom. But there ain't nothin' we can do 'bout it now."

I sniffle. "And – and like I was sayin' earlier, there's not a cure, so we couldn'ta helped her, anyway, and I know that, but . . ."

Dad hugs me tighter. "Ain't no 'buts' about it, Syd, she wasn't gonna make it outta that house."

I wince.

"That's all there is to it. She was bit. But we got you out. And I'm keepin' you safe. That's what your mom wanted, more'n anything else. It makes all of the rest of it okay."

It wasn't okay, but I know what he means, and I love him for saying it. I play with the buttons on his shirt. "I'm sorry I snapped at you last night."

"It's alright." He pauses. "Hey," he says, pulling my head back so we're looking straight at each other. "That sh – that stuff I said? 'Bout one less thing to worry about?"

I wasn't sure he'd remember that. He sometimes forgets things that happen when he's been drinking.

"I shouldn'ta said that. I had a little too much wine in me."

"It's okay, Dad," I say. "You're not a mean drunk."

That makes him smile for some reason. "Nah, but I ain't a very smart one, neither." Then the smile fades and his voice and eyes get extra soft. "Little Bit, you can always talk to me. Alright? 'Bout whatever."

I wipe my face off. "'Kay."

"'Kay." He runs his hand over my hair and kisses my forehead. "I love ya," he says, which is one of those things he doesn't say too often because he knows I know it, but it always makes me feel special to hear it anyway. I say it back to him, and even though I still miss my mom really bad, things aren't quite as awful inside of me now. My chest feels cleaner.

My dad stands up then, playfully batting my head to the side as he does. "I'm gonna go find Jenner, see if we missed anythin' important."

"Can I come?"

"Nah, you stay here. I'll tell you 'bout it later."

He leaves, and I don't let myself think too hard about why he didn't let me go with him. We're good again, my dad and I, and I ain't about to ruin that.

. . . . . .

Dad gets back in maybe twenty minutes. I bound up from the couch when he enters. "What'd Dr. Jenner say?"

"Couldn't find Jenner. Found, uh, Lori."

"What'd she say?"

And something's wrong, I can tell right then. My dad's eyes stay on mine for a little too long, the way they do when he's worried. But he just shakes his head. "Nothin' too important."

"Dad –"

He jerks his head at the cot. "C'mere."

And so I do, words dangling on my tongue. Dad sits cross-legged beside the cot and gestures for me to do the same across from him. Once I have, he drops something on the surface between us - a deck of cards. "Heard you were still playin' five-card draw. Think it's 'bout time you graduate to Texas Hold'em."

And I know Texas Hold'em, he and Merle used to play it all the time, and I always wanted to join and they never let me, but right now, right now I just want to know what my dad's keeping from me. I make the most serious face I can. "Dad," I say. "What did you find out from Lori?"

"What'd I just tell you? Nothin' important." He starts to shuffle. His hands are fast.

I swallow. "Dad."

"Sydney Rose, you're gonna stop askin' questions and play some poker with your old man. Right now. Hear me?"

And I don't even know what to do with that, because that was some crazy jumble of a warning and something playful and it's weird, but I listen, I shut my mouth, I take the cards I'm dealt, and I learn how to play Texas Hold'em. Because it's fun and it's a grownup game and I love my dad and I'm tired of worrying.

Things go good. Things keep going good for a long time, and really, I almost totally forget that my dad came back here with that bad look in his eyes.

But then the lights go out.


	13. Better This Way

"Dad?" I say, my voice a little higher than usual, but not bad. A tiny light – an emergency light, is that what it's called? – has flickered on, shining above the door, so it isn't completely dark in here, but still – what's going on?

My dad, he's muttering something. The shadow that's really him moves to the door, opens it, and then our room is flooded with light again. I put down my cards – I have a full house, but I guess that doesn't matter now – and dart over beside him, leaning out into the hall at the same time he does.

None of the lights have turned off out here, but some of the others are out of their rooms, too - Dale, Andrea, Jacqui, the moms, the other kids. I don't know about Rick and Shane, or Glenn and T-Dog.

"Hey, what's goin' on?" my dad asks the hallway. "Why's everything turned off?"

"Energy use is being prioritized."

Dr. Jenner. I turn to see him appearing from a small hall in between two doors, a hall from I-don't-know-where, and he strolls through us all, by Lori and Carl and Carol and Sophia and then by Dad, and by me, and the doctor just keeps on going, passing Andrea and Dale, who follow him with their eyes and then with their feet. We all do that, actually. "Air isn't a priority?" Dale asks. "And lights?"

"It's not up to me," says Dr. Jenner, and it makes me nervous that he's talking funny. Flat. "Zone 5 is shutting itself down."

Even as he says this, the whole hallway goes dark behind us, except for more emergency lights.

"Hey!" My dad says angrily, chasing after the doctor, who's walking pretty fast. "Hey, what the hell does that mean?"

Dr. Jenner walks us through the rec room, we turn a corner, and then a long metal walkway appears before us. It's so dark, I don't like it – I'm not scared, I just don't like it – and Dr. Jenner still hasn't answered my dad, and that's never a good idea, I know, and Dad shouts, "Hey, man, I'm talkin' to you! What do you mean it's shuttin' itself down? How can a buildin' do anything?"

"You'd be surprised," Dr. Jenner mutters. We reach stairs. I try to stay close to my dad. Behind me, I hear Lori shout Rick's name, and I look at her and then I look down below us, at a wide span of black tile, and there they are – Rick, Shane, Glenn, and T-Dog. Where have they been?

My dad and I follow Dr. Jenner down the staircase to that tile floor, to the other men, with the others still behind us. We have everyone, the whole group's here, and now we're all together in this too-big space on the tile that I'm not touching but I just know is somehow cold.

I brush up against my dad. He touches my head but doesn't break pace.

"Jenner," Rick begins when the doctor reaches him. "What's happening?"

"The system is dropping all nonessential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark."

We walk through a wide doorway – so many wide doorways in here – and then we're in the computer room. I'm disoriented for a minute, since it's a different entrance than before, but yes, it's definitely the computer room. I remember the Test Subject 19 stuff and put a knuckle to my teeth. Dr. Jenner is pointing now. I follow his hand to what looks like a giant digital clock hanging from the wall, only it's not a clock, the red numbers read off _00:31'28,_ and then the "28" goes down to "27," and then that goes down to "26". It's a timer. A timer for what?

"Right on schedule," says Dr. Jenner.

Since we didn't enter through the main door, the one with the bridge, there's a three-step staircase to get up to the raised platform with all of the computers. Dr. Jenner pauses at the foot of it, though, and the group pauses with him, because what else are we gonna do?

He looks at my dad for a minute, Dr. Jenner does, and so do I – and Dad has on his scary expression. God, I hate that one. I look away. If Jenner notices or cares how mad my dad looks, he hides it, and his eyes move over to Andrea. "It was the French."

"What?" Andrea looks as confused as I feel. The French? Like in _The Aristocats?_ The French are in France, that's all the way in Europe, and what does that even have to do with anything?

"They were the last ones to hold out, as far as I know. While our people were bolting out the doors and committing suicide in the hallways –"

– I'll never stop hating that word, _suicide_ –

" – they stayed in the labs until the end. They thought they were close to a solution."

"But they never found one, right?"

That was me. That was me, talking out loud, and that's strange, because usually I let my dad do the talking in front of the whole group. I'm a little embarrassed now, actually. But, no, can't be, this is important.

Dr. Jenner gazes down at me, putting one hand in his lab coat pocket. "No. They never did."

I exhale. I don't look at Dad, but he's looking at me, I can feel it.

"What happened?" Jacqui asks.

Dr. Jenner waves his hand at nothing in particular, stepping up the stairs now, stopping at the top. "Same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice."

Then he says something about fossil fuels and I can't focus and I gaze at the group instead. Everyone is looking around or at each other or at Dr. Jenner. And no one looks comfortable. My dad's still scary. Rick is staring at Dr. Jenner like my Nana used to stare at jigsaws.

Then, bam, something's changing. Just as Dr. Jenner stops talking and turns and starts to head to a computer, Shane bursts forward from the edge of the group, up the stairs, looking ready to kill. Like, as much as my dad. "Let me tell you somethin' –"

But Rick jumps after him, grabbing his arm. "To hell with it, Shane! I don't even care!"

That's when I know things are really, really bad, because there's a sharp edge to Rick's voice that sounds a lot like fear.

Rick and Shane are both up on the platform now. Rick turns and points at Lori, tells her to grab their things, then tells all of us to do the same, and he yells, Rick does, he yells "We're getting out of here NOW!" and so I know things are even worse than I thought, and fine, I'm scared now, and then my dad has a hold on my arm, and everyone goes, we're all jogging back to the door, and then –

Blaring. _EH! EH! EH!_ It sounds like my mom's old alarm clock but so much louder, and from everywhere, out of the speakers Vi usually talks from.

My dad's hand tightens on my arm, almost hurting. "What the hell . . ."

The gigantic computer screen on the wall – the one that showed us the brain – comes to life, and there's nothing on it but another digital clock, identical to the real one. _00:29:59:18_ , the computer clock reads the first time I look, but like the one on the wall, it's counting down.

Meanwhile, Vi is speaking over the alarm noise. "Thirty minutes to decontamination."

Decontamination. I remember that word, I remember it from _somewhere_ , and I don't know where, but it's not a happy word. And I'm breathing hard now. I feel like I felt that night Mom came home – this was after the walkers, when my parents and Merle and me were holed up at Mom's – and I was already in bed and I heard Dad start yelling because she'd gone out alone without telling anyone, and then he got quiet all of a sudden, and that's when I got that feeling, _this_ feeling, like . . .

Like something is so, so wrong.

"Dad?" My hand goes out, I cling to his shirt. He looks at me, at the clock, at Dr. Jenner. His teeth are clenched like mine get sometimes.

My voice lowers. "Daddy . . ."

A very quick, firm neck rub. "Shh, you're fine . . ." Then, quieter, quiet enough that I'm sure he thinks I can't hear it but I can, "God _damn_ it . . ."

Dr. Jenner's at a computer now. He fiddles around. The blaring stops.

"Everybody, y'all heard Rick!" Shane shouts from the edge of the platform. "Get your stuff and let's go! Go now!"

Lots of talk from all over.

"Let's go, let's go!"

"Come on!"

"Hurry!

Everyone knows there's danger now. There's noise. Movement. My dad beside me, pulling me, pushing me.

A hissing noise and a bang.

The huge door, the main door, up at the top of the bridge. It's closed.

Dr. Jenner's sitting down in a chair. He's pressing buttons again.

"Did you just lock us in?" asks Glenn, out of breath.

Dr. Jenner doesn't answer.

_"He just locked us in!"_ Glenn shouts in a scratchy voice that hurts my ears and stomach.

My feet, they can't move. Neither can my eyes, no, they stay on the door, where Rick is. I'm sorta aware that my mouth is hanging open but it's so distant I don't try to do anything about it.

Lori shouts for Carl. Carl shouts for Lori.

Me, I stare at the door.

_"You son of a bitch!"_

My dad's voice. From behind me. He's not holding my arm anymore? When did that happen? I don't turn. I stare at the door.

_"You locked us in here!"_

Oh, it's his worst voice, his most angry voice, the voice I've only ever heard a few times, when he was fighting with Mom, or Merle, or back at camp after Merle got left behind . . . This voice, it's only for the really bad things.

Rick's the only person I can see, what with him being by the door, and he points, I'm sure at my dad, and yells for Shane. Next thing I know, Shane's shouting, "Hey! _Hey!"_

Things get scattered together then. My dad yells some more, so does Shane, and T-Dog. There's a scuffle, I know the sounds of a scuffle when I hear them.

I stare at the door.

Things slow down behind me.

I stare at the door. Rick moves away from it, his face stony. He passes me. "Hey, Jenner?" I hear. "Open that door, _now."_

"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed."

"Well, open the damn things!" says Dale.

Dr. Jenner says he doesn't control that. The computers do. He told us before that when the front door closed it wouldn't open again. We heard him say that.

Me, I stare at the door.

There's definitely no fighting going on anymore.

The door is also definitely closed. And Jenner won't open it.

I stop staring at the door. I turn slowly around.

The door stays closed behind me. Jenner doesn't open it.

My feet carry me up the stairs and past a few computers and people and then I'm by my dad. He sees me, reaches out to me, lets his hand drop and I don't know why and then he paces, a few feet this way, a few feet that way, breathing hard, arms swinging, hunter's eyes on Dr. Jenner. I saw a tiger at the zoo once, with my Papaw, and the tiger, he would get on the very edge of his cage and move back and forth along it, and the loose way his legs moved and the sharp gaze he kept on us as we watched reminded me so much of my dad. And yeah, that's how Dad looks now. Like a predator ready to strike. And Dr. Jenner's the prey.

Carol hugs Sophia and Lori hugs Carl while my dad paces. And Dr. Jenner says, "It's better this way."

. . . . .

_"Daryl, it's better this way. Take her, now, and you get her the hell out of here."_

. . . . .

I grab a fistful of my hair and pull it over my eyes until my scalp hurts deep in the roots.

"What is?" Rick asks. What's better, he means. He's sweating. Panting. "What happens in twenty-eight minutes?"

Dr. Jenner turns to his keyboard, types something.

I catch Rick and Shane exchanging tight-lipped glances and then they're both moving forward, pressing in on the doctor. _"What happens in twenty-eight minutes?"_ Rick demands.

Dr. Jenner shoots to a stand, and his fists are clenched, and I think something inside of him blows up, and he screams, _"You know what this place is!"_

I hate screaming.

"We protected the public from _very_. _Nasty. Stuff!"_ He moves to Shane, looks him in the eye, yells in his face. Dr. Jenner's angry and he's different, so different from the man at dinner last night, and my bottom lip trembles but my eyes don't leave Dr. Jenner. My dad's stopped pacing. He's moved in front of me. His fingers twitch.

Oh, and Dr. Jenner screams on. What's he shouting about now? Right. Nasty stuff. "Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out, ever!"

I don't know what any of that stuff is, really. Dr. Jenner stops then, just like that. He seems lost for a second. Maybe a little surprised. At himself, I mean.

Silence.

The doctor sits in his chair. He straightens out his lab coat. He wipes his mouth. When he starts talking again, it's just that, talking, he's not loud about it anymore. But he still sounds bad. Tired. Just . . . bad. "In the event of a catastrophic power failure – in a terrorist attack, for example – HITs are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."

We learned organism in school. It draws up memories of plants and animals, though. I don't think that's what Jenner means. Rick asks about the other term, though – _HITs_.

Dr. Jenner pauses. "Vi, define."

_"HITs, high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives, consist of a two-stage aerosol ignition –"_

That's when my dad stops pacing and finally touches me, grasping my shoulder. Too tightly again.

Ignition means fire.

_" – that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive –"_

Explosive. Blowing up. Boom.

My dad's arm moves around my shoulders, pulls me to him, but not before I glimpse his face, which is now scary in a very different way.

_" – except nuclear. The vacuum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen between five thousand and six thousand degrees and is useful when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired."_

Rick is holding Lori and Carl. I can hear Carol crying but I can't see her with my head pressed against Dad.

"It sets the air on fire," mumbles Jenner. "No pain."

And I think Dad wants to kill him right then. I can feel the rage come from him like heat, hear it in the hissing of his breath, the tightness in his fingers. I'm not exaggerating, I don't really mean he just wants to yell at Dr. Jenner, or beat him up, or break his bones – I think he actually, truly wants to kill him. But he doesn't. He uses his free arm to massage my neck and squeezes me to him like he may not let go, ever.

But he'll have to when –

And Dr. Jenner's still talking. "An end to sorrow, grief, regret . . ."

Sobbing and whimpers and heavy breathing. My dad's arms that are supposed to always be safe, no matter what.

_Boom._ I wonder if it sounds like that, really.

"Everything."


	14. Tryin' to Do Right

_"Open the damn door!"_

Dad. I don't look over. He's on the bridge. I'm in the middle of all the computers, I'm on the floor. A couple of feet away from me, Sophia and Carl hold their mothers. I hold my knees.

"Out of my way!"

Shane. He's back, then. He and T-Dog and Glenn went through one of the smaller doors – Dr. Jenner only locked the big one, I guess it's the only way that leads upstairs – and to the rooms, for the gun bag, in hopes that we'd have weapons that could break through the door, I think. I don't see how, though. That door, it looks pretty sturdy. But I guess they'd know better, the grown-ups. Me, I want to go and get out my mom's picture and curl up with it and hide under a blanket and close my eyes. And if my dad would come, maybe I would. But he won't. I know he won't.

There's harsh banging and clanging now. I rest my forehead on my knees, wondering what the men are using on the door to make those sounds but not caring enough to look or to think about it too long. It doesn't sound like it's working, whatever it is. I hear nothing give. It's just _clang clang clang_. And people grunting. And those sounds all mix into the crying sounds – the sniffles, the whimpers – from Carol and Carl and Sophia (who's not crying quietly this time). Last I looked, Jacqui was crying, too, but silently, standing over by herself and watching the door, her face set and dripping. Andrea's face was _just_ set when I checked. She's also sitting on the floor, she's nearby, and she has no tears, same as me. No tears. That's the way to go, I think.

"You should have left well enough alone."

Dr. Jenner. He's still sitting in that chair, directly in front of where I am. I lift my head just enough to see him, looking through my eyelashes to do so. "It would have been so much easier," he says, I guess to all of us.

"Easier for who?" Lori says, and she sounds fierce, fiercer than I knew she could be. She's not crying, either, at least not very much. But she looks really scared.

We're going to die. She should be scared.

I should be scared . . .

Dr. Jenner answers, "All of you. You know what's out there – a short, brutal life and an agonizing death. Your – your sister –" Here, he's talking to Andrea, on the floor to my right and in front of me. She's facing Dr. Jenner, too, at least once he swivels his chair a bit. "What was her name?"

Andrea looks exhausted. "Amy."

Dr. Jenner repeats Andrea and then shakes his head at her. "You know what this does. You've seen it."

She has. We all have. I have.

Dr. Jenner looks up then, to his left, and I realize that Rick's standing there. How long has Rick been here? Oh, well. I hide my face in my knees again, and my hair falls down around me and blocks out most of the light. It's kind of like a blanket. I pull pictures of my mom up from my mind as Dr. Jenner asks Rick, "Is that really what you want for your wife and son?"

Rick's answer: "I don't. Want. _This."_

"Can't make a dent."

Not Rick. Shane again. He's closer now, he's not yelling, he's here with the rest of us. Can't make a dent? In the door? I sigh. I figured.

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher," says Dr. Jenner.

"Well, _your head ain't!"_

Dad. Of course. I sigh – again – and wrap my arms around my head. A lot of words, yelling, cries of my dad's name and things like, "Whoa, whoa!" and and "Don't!" Sounds of a scuffle – again – and then one of the men demanding "Back up! Just back up!" and then the scuffle ends.

I want Mom. That's what I feel, that's what I keep feeling, as Dr. Jenner starts talking to Rick about how _he_ wants this, Rick does, because he doesn't think there's any hope that we'll survive and it's pointless and Rick says something about keeping hope alive and Sophia and Carl keep clinging to their moms and I don't know where Dad is because I'm not looking up at all now and Rick says there's _always_ hope and Andrea says everything's gone and Dr. Jenner says this is our extinction event and Carol says this isn't right, Dr. Jenner can't just keep us here.

"One tiny moment," Dr. Jenner says to her, reasoning.

Mom was good at that, at reasoning with me. She made me think about things. She bragged about how smart I was all the time.

Dr. Jenner, he reasons on. "A millisecond. No pain."

Like when Dad shot Buck. He was suffering, he was going to die anyway, so Dad killed him. It was fast. No pain. It was an act of mercy, isn't that what Dad called it? Dad himself, that's what he said.

I get Dr. Jenner, I think.

Carol's a little hard to understand through the tears, but I think I hear, "My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this!"

"Neither does mine!" my dad shouts. Oh, good. He remembers I'm here.

No, no, that's a mean thought. He's just trying to get us out of here –

Why?

That's a bad thought. I shouldn't think that.

But, God, I am.

I want Mom.

Dr. Jenner talks about holding our loved ones and waiting for the clock to run down. Someone pumping a shotgun. Dad.

Rick shouts, "Shane, no!"

Not Dad?

"Stay out my way, Rick!" Shane shouts. "Stay out of my way!"

Then there's a hand on my right shoulder and a hand on my left. I suddenly wish they'd just leave me alone. I like being here, under my hair.

"Sydney." Dale's voice. Soft and nice. He sounds so much like my Papaw. Even as Shane's telling Dr. Jenner to open the door or he'll blow his head off, Dale's talking like Papaw. "Come on, come here, let's go."

And so I look up and Shane's back is to me and he has his huge shotgun pointed at Dr. Jenner and Dale is on my right and Lori is the one touching my left arm and she's urging me and Carl up and so I stand and let Dale lead me away and behind some computers where most everyone except Rick and Shane and Dr. Jenner and Andrea are and, yeah, my dad's here, too. He's holding an axe. He's sweating and his eyes are on Shane.

Rick's talking. Telling Shane that if he does this, we'll never get out of here. That makes sense. Dr. Jenner's the only one who knows the code. I remember one time my mom forgot the code for Nana and Papaw's security system and the alarm went off. The cops ended up showing up. Mom was angry but somehow it was funny, too, and when she realized I was laughing about it she couldn't help but start laughing, too, even though she tried hard not to.

"Shane," says Lori from my left. "You listen to him."

Rick says something else and I study Carl. He's still crying, not hard, but crying. He's afraid. He doesn't want to die. I get that, I guess. He has his whole family. His mom's holding him right now. Hell, Carl hasn't lost much of anything.

Shane starts back at shouting, not words, just one long shout.

There's a strange lightness in my stomach that's not really comfortable or uncomfortable. I bet I know what it is. It's the place in my gut where bitterness and anger should be, where I should be hating Carl for having so much left. But there's just nothing there. Good. Why should any of it matter? The door's closed. The clock's ticking.

Shane starts shooting. He shoots computers, I think. I hear glass shattering among the gunshots, but I don't see anything because my dad grabbed me and pulled me down to the floor right after the first _BANG_. Down here, I see a second axe resting close by us. So those are what they were trying to use on the door.

No more shooting, and then there's hitting sounds. Falling. Rick saying, "You done? _Are you done?"_ and a burning smell and sparking noises that must be from the computers and that remind me of fireworks and then Shane is answering, "Yeah, I guess we all are."

Fireworks. That firework show Mom and I went to when I was . . . seven? We got American Flag snowcones and she didn't say a word about the calorie count.

Everybody else starts getting up. Dad, too. Before he stands, I say, "Dad? Do you believe in heaven?"

He meets my eyes with a strange look that I've never really seen, and I know I shouldn't like, but I can't seem to care. I just want an answer. But he doesn't give me one. He stands. Of course he stands, of course he looks away from me, of course I have to go back to hugging my knees and wanting my mother, wanting my mother, _wanting my mother._

She believed in heaven.

"I think you're lying," Rick's saying.

"What?" That's Dr. Jenner.

"You're lying. About no hope. If that were true, you'd have bolted with the rest. Or taken the easy way out."

Suicide, he means.

"You didn't," continues Rick. "You chose the hard path."

_Suicide._ I know I said I hated that word before, but I don't now. It's just a word. It's just a decision. It's just one more way to die, like getting run over or being in a car wreck or getting eaten by a walker.

Rick asks Dr. Jenner _why_. Dr. Jenner says it doesn't matter.

I still hear Carol crying. I heard Mom cry a few times, like after Tommy – the boyfriend who lived with us for a couple of months – moved back out, or when my Nana's dad Poppy died, and the time, after the walkers came, when Mom and Dad came back to Mom's from my grandparents' house and Mom couldn't even talk, and Dad was there –

Dad, my dad, he's here _now_ , why won't he –

Rick says _It always matters_. What always matters? I don't know.

"You stayed when others ran," says Rick. He's breathing hard. "Why?"

Footsteps. Heavy ones. I look up and my dad's walking away, back up the bridge, back up to the door, carrying both of those axes. Jenner talks about a promise and his wife and Lori says the words "Test Subject 19," but I stop listening after that, because I'm following my dad. He's put one axe up against the wall and he's hacking at the door with the other. I wonder why he brought both but don't ask. I know taking an axe to the door won't help anything, and I bet he knows that, too, because he's really smart. He just doesn't like doing nothing, my dad. He's like Mom in that way. And like me. Until now, at least, because now I just want to curl up under that blanket . . .

I come up behind Dad. I don't get close enough to him that the axe can hit me, I know better than that.

_Clang. Clang. Clang._

"You didn't answer," I say in between hits.

Dad stops, turns around. His eyes flicker behind me and then back. "Answer what?"

He knows what. "'Bout heaven. Whether or not you believe in it."

"It don't matter, Sydney."

"Yeah, it does." A far-away part of me flinches, because I know I'm close to backtalking and my dad hates it when I do that, but I think maybe, at a time like this, some rules just don't really matter anymore. And my dad, he narrows his eyes, but I don't think the backtalking's why.

"No. It don't." His free hand points at me. "You ain't dyin' today. You hear me?" He whirls around.

_Clang. Clang. Clang._ He yells a little on that last one. Before he can strike again, I say, "If there's a heaven, Mom's there."

My dad freezes. I hear the others talking behind me, but I can't tell what they're saying. My dad, his head rotates to me and he gives me that strange look from before, only worse. Then he throws the axe down, and it hits the floor so hard that I jump and then take a step back when I see that my dad's coming towards me, but he's fast and before I know it he's stooped down and taken ahold of my arms.

"You listen to me," he says, and I know right away I've somehow got into trouble. "Your mom's gone, and I'm sorry. Your uncle's gone, hell, _everybody_ you and me ever knew 'fore all of this is gone, and baby girl, I'm _sorry_."

My dad doesn't say he's sorry much. And he doesn't call me baby girl when I'm in trouble. I squirm but he doesn't let go. "And I don't know 'bout heaven," he says, "Or anything like that, I just don't. But what I do know is that your mom would be pissed as hell at you for thinkin' what I think you're thinkin'."

My dad's never slapped my face. Ever. But I think this is what it would feel like if he did. "Dad – "

I stop when he gives me a little shake. "I said _listen_ , girl, I'm already wastin' enough time!" Our heads are really close, inches away. "What'd I tell you just this mornin', huh? _What'd I say?_ I said that you bein' safe was all that mattered to your mom. You remember that? You care? Does what she wanted matter or you just thinkin' all 'bout yourself?"

I'm sobbing. He's pretty much holding me up now, my legs are halfway limp, but he keeps talking.

"And how 'bout me, huh? You care 'bout what I want? 'Cause I want my daughter alive and safe and fightin'." One of his hands comes up and clasps the side of my face. His voice changes, lessens, thank God. He sounds winded. "Sweetheart, this ain't you. This ain't my tough girl."

"I – I – I m-miss _Mom_ – I wanna see _Mom_ –"

"In heaven? There ain't no guarantees of heaven. This is all we know we got."

"There has to be a heaven –"

"Fine. You'll get there someday. But not today, not anytime soon. Hey. _Hey!_ You love me?"

That's a stupid question, and my dad ain't stupid. "Y-Yeah . . ."

"Well, you still got me. You still got me, Sydney. And I ain't God's gift to single parentin', you think I don't know that? But you mean more'n anything to me, and I'm tryin' to do right by ya." Both of his hands are on my face now, his thumbs are brushing off tears, and God, I'm sick of tears. "But you gotta try, too. We're gonna get outta here, and – "

Behind him, the door opens.

One of Dad's hands drops as he turns and looks at it, at that open door. For a very short second, we're still, absorbing that opening and all that it means.

Dad takes a deep breath. "Little Bit –"

"Four minutes, Dad," I say. My voice is shaky, but I'm definitely talking better now. Tears still roll, but I've got the sobbing under control, at least.

"What?"

I point at the clock. The others are making their way up the bridge, their footsteps loud, and most of them are shouting one thing or another and so I have to talk right into Dad's ear. "W-we got four minutes to get out. We need to go."


	15. Beautiful

Dr. Jenner can't open the doors up at the top of the CDC, the actual exit. He doesn't have that power. So, once the group reaches the top and the sealed doors and that huge wall of glass, we just kind of run around like chickens with our heads cut off, trying to break through the panels. And failing. Shane's shotgun, the axes, T-Dog even hits the glass with a chair. Nothing works. We're running low on time. But then Carol pulls out a grenade that she found when she did Rick's laundry on his first night in camp, and Rick puts it against the glass, and we all duck down by the wall. The grenade goes off, I feel it against my back, and it hurts my ears, but the glass shatters and then we're going through the newly-opened panel, out into the sunlit world that reeks of corpses and death in general.

But I got my dad. I got my dad. I stay by him as we all run back through the graveyard – that's what Dad called it, right? – the graveyard around the CDC. Walkers are out and about. I don't have my knife, I don't have anything but the clothes on my back, but Shane got Dad's crossbow when he went back to the rooms earlier, so Dad has that. He doesn't use it now, though, he keeps it on his back, since we're running and trying to get away, not trying to kill walkers. But he still has the axe in his hand, and he slices off a geek's head at one point, never missing a beat.

The group makes it to the vehicles – well, no, the group minus three. I should say that now. Minus three . . . No, I _shouldn't_ say that now, I can't even _think_ about that now. Gotta get to the truck. I do. Dad opens my door, I jump in, he shuts it and goes around, tosses the axe into the back. Then we're both in here, we're both closed in, the crossbow's in between us, and we're safe.

_Safe?_ A voice inside of me echoes disbelievingly. I pinch my arm to make that voice shut up.

Dad turns the truck on, but the cars in front of us don't move. I saw Rick and Lori and Carl and I think maybe Glenn go into the RV – because Dale won't be driving it, Dale, who understood why I didn't like fishing and who sounds like my Papaw –

Not the point. _Not the point._ The RV should be moving, that's what I'm getting at, Rick or someone should be driving it, but the caravan's still, the RV at the front and expected to lead the way and not doing it.

"What the hell?" Dad growls.

But I see them before he does. And when I see them, my heart jumps around and I don't smile but on the inside it kind of feels like I should be. "Look!"

Dale and Andrea. Coming from the busted panel, hopping through the bodies, running to the RV. They stayed behind, but now they're coming, they've changed their minds, they're going to live, and for some reason, and no matter what I was thinking only a few minutes ago, this makes me happy. I look for Jacqui but don't see her. I barely have time to process this before I'm watching Dale and Andrea drop and the ground shakes and light and fire appear and take over my world, and then my dad pushes me down and covers me up.

I keep feeling it and hearing it for a long time, the explosion. I try to get up once or twice, almost without meaning to, but Dad keeps me pinned to the seat. I want to see it, I can't help it – like a car wreck – but by the time my dad finally lets me up the explosion itself is long over, and just an enormous campfire remains.

It's still terrifying, though. I crane my head back, my eyes chasing the flames to the sky, and then I remember and look back down and search for Dale, for Andrea – there. They got behind one of those pillow-fort things. They're getting up now. They're going to the RV – they're in. They're good. They're alive.

But Jacqui's not. And Dr. Jenner's not. They're somewhere in all that fire.

My throat trembles and my breath sounds weird. It hits me that I'm very thirsty.

"You okay?" Dad asks. "Didn't hit your head or nothin'?"

"No." I keep staring at the CDC. What used to be the CDC. Gone, just like that . . . _Boom . . ._

I was almost in there, too, in there with Jacqui and Dr. Jenner, _all of us_ almost were . . . Up in flames, what a death.

And then what would happen? Where would we be? Where would I be right now, if I were dead . . . ?

Then the cars in front of us start moving, the RV and the Cherokee and the church van, all creeping past the fire like it's a sleeping monster, even though it's not sleeping, it's moving, thriving, writhing. Something twinges inside of me. It feels wrong to leave so soon. It's like we should all stay here and just watch the flames for a while, and not just for Dr. Jenner and Jacqui, because as bad as it sounds, we've lost plenty of people before them.

It's more like . . . like something important is over, something in the big picture and the whole scheme of things, and we need to mourn _that_ , whatever it is. Something from the old world. Before the walkers.

But Dad moves the truck forward, too. Shane's jeep follows us. We're moving on. We get back on the road, and as we make a U-turn around, I twist and watch the fire. I watch it for a long time, until Dad makes another turn and the burning CDC finally disappears behind buildings and the horizon. Even after that, I watch the smoke for a little while.

Just like that. We leave it all behind. Just. Like. _That._

And I have a secret.

A part of me – a part I can never admit to my dad, not after what just happened between us back inside – a part of me is jealous. Jealous because I like to think Jacqui and Jenner are in heaven now and maybe they can see some people they've loved and lost. Or maybe they're just sleeping. Sleeping without dreaming, just out of it all. That sounds okay. That sounds . . . nice. Peaceful. Either way, they don't have to deal with the aftermath, the aftermath of that explosion, the aftermath of the world being overrun by the walking dead. That last aftermath? That's going to last a long, long time. Maybe forever. This thought alone exhausts me, and even just rolling over and _sleeping_ sounds –

But no. No. My dad was right, I know that. Mom wanted me to stay alive. And Dad wants me to stay alive. He loves me, my dad. And I love him, and we gotta take care of each other now, and if I had been thinking straight back inside, that's what I would have been thinking about. And I'm thinking straight now, I've gotta keep thinking straight.

My mom, my mom's a memory. That's what I need to keep in mind. She's just a memory.

And she's a memory that's gonna fade, too. Because somewhere in all of that fire and smoke and debris is the only picture I had of her.

. . . . .

"You scared the hell outta me back there, missy."

It's ten minutes down the road. Dad's been silent up until this point but he's just rolled up the window, and so I know I'm in for it now, and I stare at my hands and answer, "I didn't mean to."

He doesn't reply. I look over as subtly as I can. The muscles in his face are tight, and I run my tongue over my teeth, my dry, dry teeth. He has to know, he has to know –

"Dad, I . . . I don't – I don't want to die."

He gives me a look, probably longer than he should, what with the driving, before reaching a hand out to me. "I know," he says as his fingers find my neck and knead away, like I've loved ever since I was little.

"You know?"

"'Course I do. I know my kid, you ain't suicidal."

I think back to the computer room, to what I said to him about wanting to see Mom in heaven. I think about how unafraid I was about the idea of being a part of that explosion back there, that massive, everything-changes-now explosion. It all sounds pretty suicidal to me. But now, here in the truck with him, I don't want to die. I really don't. That girl back there seems like someone else entirely, and me, I just – I just want to be my dad's tough girl. I want to be alive and safe and fighting, like he said.

But a deep-down part of me nags that I should explain, probably because I feel really bad that I scared my dad. I may have said this before, but my dad's like me – we don't scare easy, us Dixons. And so I grab something raw and in pain from inside of me and force it out. "So you know I just . . . I just wanted to see Mom? Because I . . ." I shift. "Because I - I miss her."

His hand stops massaging and just rests on my shoulder in that weighted, comforting way, like back when we buried those people after the fish fry. "Yeah, you said that already, baby girl. And I get it. So tell you what, you just go right on ahead and forget all about it." And he looks at me again, another long look, and I have so much trouble knowing what looks like that mean sometimes. This one isn't any different. Before long, though, he gives me a small smile. It's worn-down, this smile, but it's good. It's _good_ , and things go back to being okay again. The two of us are okay.

We'll be alright. Dad and me, and Carl and Lori and even Rick, and Sophia and Carol, and all of the others . . . We'll be alright.

I think.

Dad's hand slides off and he rolls his window back down. I roll mine down, too, and then I just sit back and watch outside, letting Atlanta pass by and the wind whip over my face and through my hair as we head off to somewhere. And . . . I know things are bad. I know that. But I'm with my favorite person in the whole world, and he's not mad like I thought he might be, and this terrible day has somehow managed to be beautiful, sunny and clear and bright. So, in spite of everything, I stare up at the sky and for now I just let things be okay.

**End of Season One**


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